Space Enough
by PavelTheWriter
Summary: AU story, in which the events of Life is Strange happened only in Chloe's mind, and Before the Storm is a distant memory.
1. Awake

"My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.  
My father's loss, the weakness which I feel,  
The wrack of all my friends, nor this man's threats,  
To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,  
Might I but through my prison once a day  
Behold this maid. All corners else o' th' earth  
Let liberty make use of; space enough  
Have I in such a prison."  
Shakespeare, The Tempest.

AWAKE.

The lighthouse.

You can never escape the lighthouse here.

This time it's on a sign.

Another great day in Arcadia Bay. Thank you, come again.

But it's all a lie. It was all for nothing. There is no escape.

She's not leaving. She never leaves. She sees the truck pull away - her fucking truck - round a bend and disappear, but she's still there in front of that fucking sign. Like a butterfly beating against the glass.

She screams something that sounds like fish language, and kicks at the sign, trying to split the cursed thing down the middle, only she misses it by about a mile and pitches forward like an idiot and falls on her face and wakes up.

In a Blackwell classroom, Max phases in with a start.

"Whoa!"

For a while, she has no idea where she is.

There's this greenish carpet thing with gray dots on it, which may have been white dots once, just like the carpet may have been green once, but the dots have clearly been gray for a while, and the carpet thing plays through several greenish hues, varying based on area traffic and gross accidents of the past.

And she is on top of it, on her face, in a space between the bed and the wall, which she grabs both for support as she springs up, telling herself they gotta be less gross than the floor.

It's the truth, actually. Probably.

The walls are wood panels, stained, not by accident. The bed's comforter, though greenish too, looks reasonably clean. There's another just like it on the other bed, untouched.

She sees the other bed, the lampshades, the desk, the old CRT TV like the one that used to sit in their living room, the pulled blinds, and remembers. The Three Seals.

But she also remembers everything else still, and her gaze snaps from the empty pill and whiskey bottles on the dresser to the gun handle peeking from under a pillow.

Chloe shoots Frank in the chest. She shoots him in the leg. She shoots Pompidou, and it's the saddest thing because he makes that hurt dog sound as he dies.

Her mind catches up at about this moment, and begins to reject it all. The room spins. Her stomach fills with something hot and bitter that wants to get out.

"No," she says, swallowing. "No fucking way."

Her voice sounds weird, like listening to yourself on a recording, or even, a weirder thought comes from the left somewhere, like you've been used to listening to your voice on records and then heard yourself actually speak for the first time.

There's never been a more appropriate time for wake and bake. She looks for weed and both, sees and remembers that there's no weed, at the same time. There is, however, a pack of smokes on the side table, so she fishes out a cig and lights it, standing up between the beds. She wants to lie down, but is afraid to.

The cigarette smoke helps, but also hits her hollow stomach and her equilibrium.

The train is coming. She sees its headlights through the cloud of smoke. Pretty soon, the headlights see her, too, and the train starts to scream.

She realizes that she's about fall. She needs to sit down, just not there.

She draws the blinds. The sunlight blinds. She finds the balcony door handle by touch, flicks the lever and pulls it to the side. The wind and the noise of the waves hit her in the face, and she likes it. Her vision fades in. She can see the water across the strip of a reedy beach and she likes that, too.

"No," she says. "No fucking way."

There's a white plastic chair on the left. She sits down and takes a deep drag, studying, steadying her hands. They shake, but they are her hands.

The waves roar like a tornado.

October 7th, she recalls. That's when they meet. That's when she gets shot in the Blackwell bathroom, and Max comes back from Seattle to save her. By fucking rewinding time. Then on Friday, the 11th, a giant tornado kills everyone.

She remembers this clearly. Remembers living - and dying - through five October days.

Except it never happened.

Not only because she's not - and never will be - Max fucking Caufield, but also because it's May. May… What date is it?

She chokes the life out of the cigarette and heads back in, looking around for her phone. The search takes her to the bathroom, which is also reasonably clean.

How drunk was I last night? I should use my mom's phone to call mine. She finds her mother's phone in her step-douche-infested bedroom and dials the number. Her phone is on the floor next to the toilet.

There's no phone there, just a gray plastic garbage can with a plastic liner inside, empty except for the torn soap wrapper left from the previous guest, but she keeps looking, to concentrate on something, to get away from the memories, which explode in her brain like movie flashbacks.

Not that she can.

She finds it finally, on the floor under the bed. It's May 9th, which mean she's been out for… 3 days? She remembers now. She drove away on the 6th. The "anniversary." Happy joy rainbow fucking unicorns. Drove south until she found this spot. As good a spot as she was going to find. Escape from Arcadia, the Epilogue.

Pills, booze, and the gun for good measure. Kurt would be proud.

Only here she was, three days later, alive somehow. Awake. Remembering. Out of her mind.

"She let me live," she says to the room. "The idiot hippy killed five thousand people to let me live."

Max, soaked in rain and tears, bleeding from the nose. Max, tearing the photo in two and giving it to the wind.

She hesitates for about a second and a half before tossing the gun into the duffel bag. The orange pill bottle watches her from the dresser. Judges her. There's no label on the bottle, of course. The empty bottle of Jack, meanwhile, is cool. Gives no fucks.

What the fuck did Frank sell me?

Chloe stabs Frank. Frank's got a scar on his neck, then he doesn't.

"You don't know shit, Chloe!"

Frank and Rachel.

Rachel.

Oh, fuck.

"No," she says. "No fucking way."

Doors, her boots on wooden stairs, the engine that was never supposed to start again, rasping and hawking and choking and complaining, then somehow managing to start after all. Tires squealing. All of these sounds seem to her to happen at the same time, in between time, maybe, while the world is a drum, rising out of the fog about 10 feet in front of her and dropping down into the cloud of dust and smoke directly behind the bed of her truck.

Fuck you, door.


	2. Dig

DIG

She eats two cheeseburgers on the drive back, with two sides of fries and a milk shake. That leaves her with roughly four dollars to her name. That doesn't matter.

Nothing matters.

Hunger did, but only because she could not keep the truck on the road without putting food in her body. Burger a la king.

She's at the table. At the Amber house. Poking at the chicken on her plate to the rhythm of the grandfather clock.

"Arson," Rose Amber says. "Why would anyone do that?"

She blows by the Arcadia Bay sign, blows by the Two Whales, and does not stop until she's through the town completely. The sign American Rust rattles under the wheel of her truck for the hundredth time. The truck skids to a stop. She runs. She knows exactly where she is going.

It's not. Real.

She knows this.

She runs.

There used to be a passage right here, a shortcut, the memory comes without a flashback. But the junkyard has changed. Everything has changed. She has to run all around the old school bus now, and she does.

Here. Oh fuck. Here it is.

She drops to her knees, and begins to dig.

A thought occurs to her that she should have brought a shovel, but it's immediately dismissed, because what if the shovel cuts through the bag? No.

She digs with her fingers and nails instead.

Max and Chloe are on their knees, digging. Chloe's fingers hit vinyl, something blue. As soon as it's uncovered, as though she triggered a trap, it breathes in their faces. The stench almost makes her retch, and then it does.

What kind of world does this?

The pain reaches out of the flashback and hits her stomach. The pain is real. Tears come and she can't stop them.

She's alone. So alone here. There's no Max. There's never been a Max. Pain is real, but Max is not. How is that fair?

She can't stop crying. He can't see anything because of the tears, but she digs.

She can't stop digging.

Max is right next to her, hair tied in a pony tail. They're in her backyard, digging for buried pirate treasure.

Her fingers hit plastic and she gasps and almost passes out, but it's just an old plastic bag. She rips it out in a fountain of dirt. Some of it hits her face.

There's nothing. There's nothing. No smell.

But what if she's… it's… deeper?

She digs deeper, then wider. Finally, she collapses in the middle of an empty shallow crater.

Still, she can't stop crying. It's a fucking tsunami of tears. It's about to wash away this entire shithole town.

Eventually, she runs out of water. The town breathes a sigh of relief.

It's probably a good time to take a nap in the shallow grave she dug, but she doesn't. She stretches out and stares up at the sky, where a pair of birds fly in weird mathematical patterns. There are no clouds and there's no sun. Just a swath of deep blue and the birds. She gets to her feet and dusts herself off half-heartedly and laughs, because fuck if she doesn't look like a ridiculous mess.

What the fuck were those pills?

A shower would be fucking amazing, but a smoke will have to do for now. She goes back to the truck. It takes a while. She's suddenly exhausted. Everything is in slow motion, like a dream in which you want to run. Not that she wants to run ever again. The entire world aches. It whines and climbs on her back and wants her to carry it. She tries, but slips on a Two Whales carry-out menu and almost faceplants into a Hellraiser mess of old syringes and broken glass. By some miracle, she finds her other foot and stays upright. Get the fuck off me, world. Her hands burn. There's blood under her nails. She spends a fucking hour lighting her cigarette and considers shooting some empty bottles to get the adrenaline going again. Just so she can function. The thought triggers another flashback, and she phases back in a moment later, checking her chest for a bullet hole.

"This is some new shit, Price," she remembers Frank saying, four days earlier. "I'll give you this as a sample. It's like you're participating in a study. You love science, right?"

"People get paid for participating in studies, Frank."

"Hey, if you don't want it, you don't want it. I'll sell you whatever you need. As soon as you pay me the hundred and seventy five bucks you owe me."

"Fine. Give me your new bullshit. Can you OD on it?"

"Just don't take the full bottle, Price. You'll be fine."

The truck starts again, somehow. The Singing Man disapproves. The fuel light is on, like it is half the time. Maybe the fucker is broken. Maybe there's a hole in the tank. She lets go of the brakes, and the truck rolls forward, bald tires crunching over gravel and junk. The truck is as tired as she is. The sign thunders underneath, like a trap door closing.

Up ahead, between the trees, she sees the lighthouse giving her the finger from its cliff.

"Chloe, I can rewind time," Max says. "I'm not crazy."

"But high, right?"

"Chloe, you ever wish you could rewind time?" Rachel says.

"Fuck, wouldn't that be nice. I'd go back and save my dad. Go back and meet you again…"

Something tells her to turn around, to check the junk shack for something, but she can't understand the message and shakes her head. Her brain is tired and scrambled and it can't figure itself out between all of these flashbacks and bullshit. It's just not trustworthy right now. Also, she's afraid again.

So she steps on the gas.


	3. Wrist

WRIST

She pulls into a parking space and parks the truck. The flashbacks come in waves. The ones from October are the worst, because not only they make her feel like she slips into their bullshit reality, she also becomes someone else in them. Maybe not quite Max Caufield, but definitely more Max Caufield than Chloe Price. This freaks her out, because it makes her feel like a ghost. Or maybe a soul trapped in purgatory. Meaning a dead person. Which she may have intended to become a few days ago, but now, when it comes right down to it…

She shuts off the engine and sits in the seat. Rides them out.

Max Caufield wearing slacks or some shit, and Chloe Price in a motorized shopping cart. The beach is full of dead whales. Max knows way more than she lets on. They talk about the good old days.

"My nose is getting cold," Chloe says.

Chloe and Max walk through the parking lot towards the RV. There's a finger painting of a smiley face in the dust of the boarded up window. The beach is deserted. There's a plastic chair and a table in front of the RV door and empty beer bottles all over.

"Wait, Chloe," Max says. "This is not going to go well."

Chloe shoots Frank in the chest. Chloe shoots Frank in the leg. Chloe shoot Pompidou. Chloe stabs Frank with a knife.

She phases back in, wondering if the message is to bring the gun or leave it. There's a little girl, about four, squatting at the edge of the surf, scooping out a hole in the sand, which overflows with every wave. Her mother is talking on the phone. The beach is empty, otherwise. No whales. She could smoke a whale right now. In the end, the gun stays in the duffel.

She crosses the lot towards the RV; her boots scraping the pavement. There's no smiley face in the window, but the chair and the table and the bottles are all there on the other side, making her stomach churn. She waits a bit for the flashback to phase out. It never does, so she exhales and checks her pockets and walks up to the door and knocks.

There's a moment where nothing moves, and she realizes there are about a thousand gulls screaming constantly over the waves. She has time enough to register their cries and to wonder if maybe she knocked on the door in some other reality and not this one, before Pompidou begins to bark.

"Goddamn it," Frank's voice. Then Frank himself in the doorway. His eyes go mustard-big when he sees who it is.

"Price! Where the hell have you been? And what the hell are you thinking showing up here looking like this? If I wanted to advertise, I would place an ad in the Beacon, not invite junkies to hang around the lot. You know you're not coming inside looking like that, right?"

She lets him talk without hearing much of what he says. Her eyes are on his wrist. Then his other wrist. There are no bracelets on either one. He notices and shuts up for a moment, then asks, "What the hell happened to you?"

"What was that shit you gave me?" she asks.

"Was that it? Were you tripping?"

"I'm still tripping, Frank. I get these flashbacks. It's a mix of things that happened and things that never did, past, future, all over the place. It's fucking with my mind and freaking the shit out of me. I need to know how to stop it."

"Shit, Price. It's a drug. It'll wear off and you'll come down. Just ride it out. How much did you take?"

"All of it"

"What?"

"With some Jack. Three days ago."

He blinks at her a few times.

"You took the entire bottle. At once."

She nods.

"Why the hell would you do that?"

"Fuck it," Rachel says. "I just want to take something that's not mine."

Her eyes are blazing. Her feather earring dances in the gusty Overlook wind. She's hurt, and pissed, and wild, and she will not be stopped.

"I'm going in," she says. "Try to keep up."

"Price?"

"That's… uh… not important right now. How do I get straight?"

"How the fuck should I know? I told you this shit was new. Nobody's ever taken the whole bottle before. And lived to tell the tale, that is. How long have you been up?"

"A few hours. Should I go to the hospital?"

"The hospital? For what? Pumping your stomach is not gonna do shit three days after the fact. No. What you need is rest."

"How am I supposed to rest when I'm tripping balls every time I close my eyes."

"Just ride them out. They won't hurt you. The hospital is bullshit, though. All they'll do is bill you."

"Like I give a shit. What's another bill we can't pay?"

"Maybe some weed will do you good. Settle your mind a bit."

"Kind of strapped for cash, Frank."

"Shit, never heard that one before… Come in a second."

He holds the door open for her gallantly. Suddenly, she's spooked to come up those steps, because Frank never volunteered free weed before.

The door opens and Chloe Price barges in, all cheekbones and blue hair and suspenders and ugly-ass cowboy boots. Max Caufield shrinks back into the corner of the bathroom. The courage she's been working up to confront the Prescott kid and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing in the girls' bathroom shrinks with her. She doesn't recognize Chloe, because she doesn't really see her, though she would not recognize her if she did, either.

"Did you check the perimeter?" Chloe Price says. "Like my step-ass would say."

The voice rings the tiniest of bells, but Max is too confused - and kind of terrified of being found - to put her finger on it. She closes her eyes to steel herself for the inevitable embarrassment of discovery, which never comes.

It's ten seconds later and both, she and Frank realize she hasn't moved. Their eyes meet. There's a silent question hanging in the space between them. She takes a couple of steps back. Frank's face becomes more confused.

"Chloe?"

"I think I'll just go home and sleep it off."

"You're walking away from free weed."

"You're volunteering free weed, Frank."

His eyes shoot past her for the briefest of moments. She follows the trajectory and sees the mother and daughter combo from earlier. She looks back at Frank and takes a couple of steps more. Frank rolls his eyes.

"What's in your head? What do you think is happening here?"

"I don't know, man. Nothing feels right."

She just got backhanded in the face. The burned room swims around her. She would like to get up but somehow she can't seem to find the up and down. The sky where the ceiling is supposed to be doesn't help.

"Chloe!" The voice. It's Frank. He's bleeding and grimacing and leaning on the wall and laboring to breathe.

"Frank!"

"Damon, what did you do?"

"Oh, I fucked you up good, didn't I?"

"People change," she says, turning and walking away. "I'll see you later, Frank."

She hears the door slap shut, but when she looks back from the truck, Frank is still there by the RV, watching her. She glances at the duffel bag and for a moment she desperately wants to come back over there and ask Frank about Rachel. Instead, she starts the truck and raises her hand in a salute that she hopes looks friendly.

He doesn't return it.


	4. Crypt

CRYPT

She makes it about halfway up Cedar Avenue when her phone begins to ring.

Mother Dear.

She declines the call. It rings again immediately.

-Not in the mood, mom, she texts. I'm alive.

-Pick up that phone right now.

"Fuck."

She stops at the stop sign and picks up.

"Where the fuck have you been?"

She doesn't remember Joyce ever using the word "fuck" in casual conversation, so it's almost kind of amusing.

"Ugh. Mom."

"I filed a missing person report, Chloe. I called every hospital from here to Portland. The Coast Guard are looking for you body under the cliffs, as we speak. And then I get a call from random people that my daughter's been spotted driving through town. And she doesn't even bother to call!"

"I'm nineteen, mom. I've only been gone three days."

"Then why didn't you tell me you were going to be away? Why didn't you answer a million of my calls and text messages and tell me you're OK? I'm your mother, Chloe! What was I supposed to do? First Rachel disappears, then you."

This hits hard and surprises her, and she blurts out "Rachel fucking left, mom," before she can stop herself. More like shouts it, turns out. A pair of little girls playing three houses down the street stop and turn to stare at her. One is blond; the other brunette. She exhales slowly and lets the truck roll across the intersection.

Joyce is silent for a moment, but only for a moment.

"Rachel would never just leave without telling you."

That exhale comes back fast and won't come out again. She opens her mouth to speak, to breathe, and can't do it. And then she suddenly can't keep it in, and the breath breaks out through both, her mouth and nose in a violent sob.

She steps on the brakes in the middle of the street and wrestles with the thing and gets it under control somewhat.

"Listen, mom," she growls into the phone. "I'm about a minute away from home. What are my chances of getting in the shower without being waterboarded by Sergeant Asshat?"

"David is not home. He drove out to Newport to look for you."

"Best fucking news I heard all day."

She pulls into the driveway at 44 Cedar, thinking it's a bad idea. Every idea she has, though, every thought, feels like a bad idea. Everything is the stupidest thing she's ever heard. Chloe Price is someone's terrible mistake. Maybe everyone's.

Joyce is out of the door, reeling her in with the tractor beam and scanning her with x-ray vision at the same time. She looks weird in civvies.

"Oh my god," Joyce says. "What happened?"

"Nothing, mom. Just camping out. Ran into a bit of weather."

"You're covered in dirt."

"Mud. It's not a big deal."

She circles her mother and enters the house, then climbs up the stairs. A flashback explodes in her face, too brief - something with lame music - for her to dwell on, but shocking enough to make her miss a step. It's not going to be one of those cases where Joyce just leaves her be, either.

"Chloe," she says, following. "Stop. You're not… well."

There's absolutely no way to prevent her mom from following into her room, so she stops before she opens that door, praying a flashback doesn't catch her during the inevitable conversation that's about to happen.

"I'm fine."

"No. You're not. This is just like… 2010, all over again."

Wrong. It's way fucking worse than 2010. It's 2008. She doesn't say it, but the truth of it fills her to capacity. Her brain can't formulate a suitable platitude fast enough. After a momentary struggle, she just gives up and says nothing at all. Fuck it. What's the point?

"Maybe you should see a doctor," Joyce says after a pause.

"And what's a doctor gonna do, mom? Bill us? Like we need another bill we can't pay?"

It doesn't even register that she's paraphrasing Frank.

"Help you!"

"I don't need some overpaid, uncaring asshole's help! Look, mom. I'm sorry about ghosting you like that. It was stupid. And selfish. Irresponsible. I wasn't thinking. But I'm fine. I'll figure it out. I just really need that shower right now. Cool?"

"Chloe, I know Rachel would…"

"Oh for fuck's sake, mom! Can you really not tell that's the last thing I want to talk about right now? Or are you doing it on purpose?"

"You have to talk about it!"

"Can it not be right now?! Can I at least get this fucking dirt off me first?!"

She storms through the door and slams it in her mother's face. Thankfully, Joyce doesn't follow, but the room doesn't help. It used to be home base, but now it looks like a crypt. Smells like a crypt, too. It's even shaped like a coffin. Oh, fucking great. She sees this next flashback coming like it's a freight train, and it's not the kind she can dodge by hopping off the tracks at the last moment. Thanks, mom.

"People are so stupid. Smug about it, too."

She's at the desk, browsing. She makes a face and changes her voice, to express "stupid smug."

"GMOs are science. They're perfectly safe. Why don't you put on your tinfoil hat and go protest the polio vaccine. Rachel?"

Rachel is not on the bed. She's standing in front of the closet, looking at the half a dozen hangers of her clothes hanging inside. She's wearing white shorts, a black t-shirt and black boots. The dragon on her calf is taking a nap.

"These have been here for years," she says without turning.

"You can drop the rent off in that jar there. Speaking of rent, come check out this apartment I found in Long Beach."

Rachel turns, and Chloe sees her face and knows. She knows she should ask what's wrong, but what she says instead is, "It's a one-bedroom that costs about as much as this house. On the plus side: don't have to share it with the step-fuhrer."

Rachel comes closer and bends down over Chloe's shoulder, until her hair is tickling Chloe's neck. She flips through photos of rooms, but she's not really looking.

"Too shabby for your Highness?"

This makes Rachel wince.

"Too fancy for my station," she says, straightening and turning away.

"You feeling OK, Rach? You're never this modest."

"Are you trying to help by being an asshole, Price?"

"Shock therapy."

Rachel's face brightens up, but just for a moment. Then the light is gone again. Chloe would like to go over there and hug her and whisper in her ear, but she catches Rachel's look and sees that it filters through a glass wall.

"What's wrong?"

"Everything."

Suddenly, this sounds bad. Way worse than Rachel's usual drama. Chloe says nothing else. Just waits, counting breaths.

"I should have probably told you this sooner, but I haven't been getting anywhere with my photos. None of the agencies are interested. I'm too short."

And Chloe is so relieved, she feels like she's about to burst out laughing. Both at her terror from a moment ago, and Rachel's big reveal. Rachel Amber, rejected. Hell frozen over. Apocalypse imminent. A tiny part of her - or is it that tiny? - is even glad. She knows she shouldn't be, though. She knows that even though something like that just seems stupid to her, Rachel is hurting for real. The whole no-fucks-given Chloe Price influence never quite stuck. Rachel can't help but give fucks. So Chloe doesn't laugh.

"How long have you been carrying that around?" she asks.

Rachel shrugs.

"A few months, I guess."

"You're right. You should have told me sooner. But anyway, fuck all that. I've just been saying how people are stupid. You know you're worth more than your height, Rachel."

"Not to the industry, apparently."

"I bet you I know what happened. What actually happened was none of your pretentious Blackwell artistes can take decent photos."

She hears the off-key note, but trying to rephrase and explain is just going to make it worse, so she just plows on, adding a little comic relief.

"Maybe we should commission Max Caufield out of Seattle. That'll open some doors. And if even that doesn't work, then fuck modeling. You can be an amazing actress, Rachel. You can be an amazing anything."

Rachel looks up. Her smile is sad, but it's a smile.

"That might not be a bad idea," she says.

"It's a perfect idea. We get the apartment. You go to a few auditions, get discovered…"

"No, I mean about bringing your friend Max from Seattle…"

"Oh, that… Well…"

"Chloe, I met someone."

There is this half image of some traveling merchant or wizard (Elamon?) or someone, and Chloe starts her witty comeback with "What, like some traveling…" and then her brain just stops working and she stands there in the middle of the room, like her mouth is a hole to another universe, from which no words can escape.

"A guy," Rachel says. "I met a guy."

"Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because I thought you should know."

"Why would I want to know about some guy you met? Not like he's the first, or the last."

Unlike the earlier "highness" dig, this one bounces off, which terrifies Chloe all over again.

"He's different," Rachel says, coldly.

"Well, shit. Break out the candles! Let's celebrate quickly. God knows the moment isn't going to last."

"Chloe, why do you have to be such a bitch? Do you think this is easy for me?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Life is hard for Rachel fucking Amber!"

The last time Chloe saw that look on Rachel's face, it was directed at a certain District Attorney.

"Obviously," Rachel says, "this was a mistake. I shouldn't have said anything. I thought we were something that we're clearly not."

Chloe tries to scoff, but her eyes are suddenly wet, and it turns into more of a gasp for breath.

"Clearly," she rasps.

Rachel, meanwhile, is somehow already by the door. Teleportation, possibly. She turns and says, "Goodbye, Chloe." And then there's just the door there. No Rachel.

This is eighteen days ago.

This is the last time they speak.


	5. Purpose

Hot water washes away dirt, blood and tears. She gets a flashback of Max in her bathroom, just reminiscing away, while the future Chloe Price - she knows - is back in her room, blazing. It's hella weird, but after the last one it's almost welcome. Almost.

She phases back in, noting how she's still upright in the shower, even though she spent the last five minutes as a hovering, disembodied eye in another reality. Or rather, unreality. Check out autopilot Chloe, she thinks. AutoChloe. AutoChloe does all right by herself while the real Price is out tripping. This is good to know, but also raises questions.

What is AutoChloe like? How do flashbacks look from the outside? Does she just zone out? Loops into whatever she was doing and continues doing that until she phases back in? Like soaping yourself in the shower? Can she do higher level stuff? What happens if she flashbacks while driving?

She can't be sure, but she feels like it must have happened at least once by now, just working off of how often the flashbacks come versus how much time she spent behind the wheel today.

Still here in one piece, so AutoChloe has to be able to drive. What else can she do? Can she talk?

Can she talk to Price-Madsen hybrid, for example, while the real Chlo is in hyperspace, solving nonexistent crimes with her imaginary friend?

The thought makes her feel better, and as she wraps the worn-ass pirate towel around, she's surprised to find herself grinning in the mirror.

What if this AutoChloe girl is different? Like a complete opposite of her? A polite, friendly girl? What if she and mom - and Mustache from Planet Dipshit - hatch a plot to get rid of the crazy punk alter ego for good?

The grin becomes laughter, which she hopes, as she crosses the landing from the bathroom to her room, Joyce doesn't hear.

Good thing I haven't had weed today yet, she thinks. Or that shit would be no laughing matter.

Laughter doesn't last, anyway. The room is a downer.

A few minutes later Chloe stands in front of the closet, just like Rachel did 18 days earlier. She is dressed. She isn't crying - there's been enough of that - just thinking. On the dresser there's a bunch of Rachel's makeup. On the floor between the bed and the dresser, there's a small stack of Rachel's books. Girl with a Dragon Tattoo on top.

"Terrible book," Rachel says. A memory. Not a flashback.

She runs her hand along the sleeve of the red-and-black flannel shirt.

Max is wearing Rachel's shirt, t-shirt and jeans.

"Ready for the mosh pit, Shaka Brah," she says, while doing this super-awkward thing with her finger and her hips.

"Mmmmaybe not," says Chloe Price from the bed.

She phases back in and reaches for her emergency stash without missing a beat. It's a pathetic roach, far below the standards of dignity, but beggars can't be choosers. She lights it with the reverence of an Olympic torch-bearer and lies back on the bed, the Oregon State official ashtray on her chest.

It feels good.

Everything slows down.

Chloe thinks back to the motel.

She remembers watching TV - the Hot Dawg Man cartoon was on - while methodically flushing the pills down her throat - three at a time - with mouthfuls of Jack mixed with Pr. Amaury. She remembers touching the gun handle every five seconds, to make sure she could find it easily when the time came. She remembers finishing everything and getting up from the bed to put the empty bottles on the counter and turning off the TV and settling back down on the pillows and touching the pack of smokes and the gun.

She remembers flipping through her phone and seeing a million texts and missed calls from her mom and whoever else, and another million of her unanswered and unreturned calls to Rachel, and despite everything, she thinks about Rachel, because she wants her last thoughts to be about her.

She remembers lighting a smoke and she remembers remembering herself smoking on the train tracks, like a dream within a dream. A dream that lasts three days. It's the three days of May 2010, when she and Rachel really met for the first time. It's the three days that gave her extra three years of life. She remembers reliving those days and getting expelled - or was it suspended - from Blackwell again, and the play and Rachel under the street lamp and Rachel getting stabbed and her lying dad. It's confusing and weird and some of it seems wrong, but a lot of it is so beautiful that she wishes it never ended.

She remembers wondering if she had already died and this was her proverbial life passing before her eyes, and she remembers thinking that maybe dying wasn't so bad, after all.

And when she reached the end of those three days and her memory began to fast forward through all of the happy times, she really thought that was it.

Except it wasn't.

Except she saw Rachel's phone, buzzing with her unanswered calls, and before she could understand anything, she was no longer Chloe, or no longer just Chloe, and all the crazy magic shit started happening, with the storms and maniacs and suicidal girls and… and…

And she couldn't stop any of it, until Max tore that photo and she and future Chloe drove away, leaving her behind.

Leaving her to come back to life, possibly with permanent brain damage.

The roach helped, but now it's dead and everything becomes a bit overwhelming again. She puts the ashtray away, so that there's nothing between her and the big question. The drug dream doesn't seem strictly real, judging from the empty grave in the junkyard, but is it just an amalgamation of her fears and anger and heartbreak, or is it a message, some bullshit allegory from a higher power? Is it telling her that Rachel really is missing and in danger? Or is that what her sick, dumped mind wants to believe?

"Sometimes people need you, though," William Price says from behind the wheel. "Even when they don't admit it."

Great. Thanks, dad. Let's add flashbacks of dreams to the mix. Another helpful hint that clears up fuck all.

"So what if they do?" she asks the empty room.

So get off your fucking bed. Smoke break is over.

She does and goes to her computer and checks the email and the local news. She should buy shit if she wants to save; Ultra Death is coming in June; her Frontside subscription expired, but she can get three more issues for free, if she fills out a survey. They found a homeless guy dead by the docks; another bookstore is closing its doors; and Sean Prescott spoke about the bright future at the Pan Estates Grand Opening.

Nothing from Rachel. Nothing about Rachel.

She grabs her dad's jacket off the hook and heads down.

It's tempting to just rush the door, but she makes an effort. Joyce is at the dining table, smoking a cigarette. A thought to pull out her own smoke and join in billows in Chloe's mind. It could be like a mother-daughter thing. Like a mother-daughter-whose-fault-it-is-that-the-mother-is-smoking-again thing. She would probably do it on any other day, but today she's not in the mood. So she just pulls out a chair.

"Are you leaving again?" Joyce asks.

"You were right," Chloe says.

"Are you saying we should make an appointment?"

"What? No. I mean you were right about Rachel. She wouldn't leave like that."

"Well, I'm glad you agree, honey, but…"

"So I'm going to find her."

"Chloe…"

"Mom, this is what I need. A purpose. Not a doctor."

"There are people who are already looking for her."

"Like who? Arcadia Bay's finest? They don't give a shit."

"I'm sure they're doing their best."

"I'm sure they are, but that's not saying much."

"Oh, Chloe. What do you know about finding someone?"

"I know you have to look! Anyway, I'm not trying to start a fight about this."

She gets up from the chair.

"I promise I'll do better about staying in touch."

"Chloe, wait."

Joyce puts out the cigarette, opens her purse and pulls out her wallet. She hands Chloe three twenty-dollar bills.

"Here."

After a pause, Chloe hugs her, and not because it's a polite thing to do.

"Thanks, mom. I'll see you later."

The sun is bright and huge, as if seen through a magnifying glass. There's plenty of daylight still left. The truck starts up quickly. It seems focused and ready to go. Just needs some gas.


	6. Stub

The affluent part of Arcadia Bay is the usual diorama of sprawling houses and pedicured lawns. She parks in front of the Amber House and just sits there, thinking that maybe she should have called instead. She actually pulls out her phone, but at that moment the front door opens, and Rose Amber comes out on the porch. She stands there, waiting, hands clasped together. Even from fifty feet away, there's so much hope and doubt and fear all at once on her face, that it almost makes Chloe cry. She may be a Stepford wife, but no one is ever going to think Rose is not Rachel's real mom.

Chloe gets out of the truck and heads towards the house.

"Hey there, Mrs. Amber," she says, waving.

Rose is frozen in place. She says nothing, only watches Chloe's face.

"I don't have news," Chloe says hurriedly. "I thought you might…"

She cuts off, seeing pain and disappointment and maybe relief on Rose's face, and slows down, until she stops completely.

After a moment's hesitation, Rose comes forward and hugs her. They stand there, hugging silently for a minute.

"Oh, Chloe," Rose says. "Joyce told me that you were gone, and when I saw your truck out there, I thought… I thought…"

"No, Rose. I'm sorry."

"Did you… were you trying to… find Rachel?"

"No, actually. That was a… different thing. But I'm going to try now. That's why I'm here."

Rose scans her face for clues, or lies, then leads her inside. While she makes tea, Chloe stands in front of the grandfather clock. It shows five after five.

Chloe places the plates on the table. A painting of cubist royalty takes up the better part of the dining room wall.

"Oh, look! It's the original whogivesashit!"

Back in the kitchen, she asks Rose for her next task.

"Would you be a dear and ask Mr. Amber what he is going to drink?"

"I will be a dear."

The DA in question is hiding behind the newspaper screen. The forest fire his daughter started is all over the front page.

"Ah, Chloe. What can I do for you?"

"What's your vice, Mr. Amber?" she asks.

"Excuse me?"

"You wife wants to know what you're going to drink for dinner."

"Oh. Let's say, sherry."

"OK. One, two, three… Sherry!"

"Comical. Chloe, maybe you can help me with something…"

She's back in front of the clock, three years in the future. It still shows five after five. What the shit? Is this thing on? The pendulum swings, though, and there's a clear clicking noise when the hand moves.

"Sugar?" Rose calls from the kitchen.

"Yeah… two," she replies, puzzled. Do flashbacks not take any time? If true, this means no delegating unpleasant tasks to AutoPrice. Damn it.

They drink the tea in silence for a while.

"Mrs. Amber… Rose… Can I ask you something?"

"I would appreciate it very much if you did, Chloe."

"And don't get offended or anything. I say shit, sometimes…"

"I think I've known you long enough, now."

"OK. So let's say I had a dream, and in this dream you and… Mr. Amber… shit… well, you stopped looking. You know? After a while. Is that even possible? I mean, is there any reason in hell that would make you say, 'She probably ran away, and there's nothing we can do at this point, so we're just going to accept that?'"

Rose Amber doesn't answer for a while, but at least she doesn't splash hot tea in Chloe's face.

"Chloe," she finally says, "are you trying to tell me something?"

"No. No, I swear, Rose. I just want to know."

Rose sighs.

"Well. If we ever did… Look, if Rachel is gone and we get no word or progress for a long time… Believing that she ran away and stopping the search might become a better option, than… Than finding… her…"

She can't say it and Chloe doesn't need her to. She nods.

What kind of world does this?

She remembers being pissed about the Ambers giving up, in the hallucination future. About everyone giving up. She gets it now, somewhat. It makes sense. Finding her in that junkyard… Ugh. No. Not in front of Rose. She pushes the thought away. Yet even as she does, she knows that she will not give up. She will not let it become the better option. Especially now that she already checked the junkyard and found nothing.

"Do you mind if I look around Rachel's room?"

"Feel free, Chloe. We've been through it a few times, though. Us and the police, both."

"That's OK. I know I'm a few weeks late."

I just want to see things Rachel left behind. I just want to find her safe and sound in her bed, by some miracle. Let this all be a prank. Let it be a misunderstanding. Let it be that Rachel came up with this whole elaborate ruse just to avoid me, because she's pissed still. Please.

"I think you're the only one in the world I can trust," Rachel says.

"I don't know… I bet there's like, one other chick in Australia, who's super trustworthy."

"Not a chance. You're one in a hundred infinities, Chloe Price."

Rachel turns over to lie on her back, reaching out to brush the bracelet on Chloe's wrist with her fingers.

"I wore this bracelet my entire life. Never asked why. Never even thought about it. Somehow, I think I always knew. Even when I didn't know. That my real mother was gone."

"You should take it back, Rachel."

"No. There's nowhere else I'd rather keep it than right there."

The room is empty, of course. The bed is made.

Chloe finds herself holding her wrist.

Wait. I had the bracelet? Not Frank? Why did I… How did I get it? The lamp post. Rachel gave me the bracelet that night under the lamp post, because I asked her to prove to me that she was serious about running away. Right? But… no. I asked her for… a kiss, didn't I? We kissed then. I know we kissed. It was… our first time. Did I get the bracelet after? No! No, she had it after! But… fuck. Didn't I ask her to get a star tattoo? How can I have multiple memories of the same event? Is this drug fucking with my real memories now, too?

"That's just great."

While the flashback is still fresh in her memory, which is some kind of twisted mindfuck Chloe prefers to just snag in stride, she scans the walls. The astrology charts and the maps and the Machiavellian wisdom still hang, but the hats and the masks and the stars are all gone. The sky globe is still around, and the travel posters. Most of the inspirational shit is off the cork board, replaced with acceptance letters to about a dozen schools. Chloe sees headers from Yale and Harvard Law, USC, UCLA, AFI, Columbia University. Ivied coats-of-arms and whatnot. Rachel never said she had that many options open. Just that she was looking at a couple of Cali schools. Was that because Chloe was so excited about Cali and looking for places and generally dreaming the Cali dream? In between the letters are rave fliers and ticket stubs from the shows they went to. On the dresser, there's a photo of the two of them, dancing on the beach.

Tears come without warning. Chloe gasps and wipes them off roughly. Clearly, her nerves are shot. Must be the sign of aging.

She contemplates stealing the pic, but sort of forgets about it halfway through the thought. Peeking from behind the frame is another ticket stub. This one doesn't have a matching pair and is from Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, dated February 28. Oregon vs Oregon State. Basketball.

There's a flashback, but either she's really distracted, or it's completely incoherent. Either way, she barely registers it. There's… snow and… a creek… and a screen door?

She goes back downstairs. Rose is in the living room, reading Bleak House.

"Hello again," she says.

"Do you happen to know who Rachel went to this game with?"

"What game? Oh, that one. They got free tickets at school. I guess Oregon was courting Blackwell's finest, so a group of them went. Principal Wells drove, I believe. Rachel was really bummed about going, I think."

Which is probably all true, except this is the first Chloe hears of it.

"Didn't Rachel tell you?" Rose asks, shrewdly.

"Uh… not who were all going…"

"Do you think it's important?"

"I… uh… I'm just grasping for straws, Rose. I'll see you later, OK?"

"Any time, Chloe."

Rose sees her to the door.

"And Chloe…?"

"Yeah?"

"Rachel... loved… I mean, loves you. You know that, right?"

For a while, Chloe can't respond, so she just looks away and nods.

Finally, she says, "You too, Rose."

It's the closest she's ever seen Rose Amber to crying.


	7. Vortex

She texts Justin while driving and gets a surprisingly quick reply, but his answer to her question about the basketball game trip is: "The wut?"

It's a game with balls and baskets, dumbass.

With only one opposable thumb to spare, she sends, "nvm." He "lols" back.

The fuel light is blinking now, so she detours to Arcadia Gas and feeds the tank ten bucks' worth to appease it. The light sighs contentedly and goes to sleep. Chloe circles back up the wooded slope. Blackwell parking lot is pretty full. There are a couple of legal spots left open on the woods' side, but they look narrow. Too iffy for the student driver here. The handicapped parking is wide open, though. And close to the stairway. She parks diagonally and with a certain satisfaction.

"There's a timeline in which I'm in a wheelchair," she says to the dashboard King. He nods.

She takes a deep breath and gets out of the truck.

On the left is the red wall of the swimming pool. On the right the woods stretch up the mountain side. Straight ahead, where the school driveway cuts a swath through the trees, she can see the lighthouse.

Blackwell is a weird place. She's been by plenty of times, of course, to pick up Rachel, or run an errand for Frank, but she rarely had to get out of the truck for those. It's been a couple of years since she's actually walked on campus. It's making her want to smoke. She doesn't, though. The faster she's in, the faster she's out of this hellhole. She takes the stairway steps three at a time.

There's a missing person poster on the wall of the pool, which feels like a flashback. She wants to just walk on, but can't, so she stops and reads it and stares at Rachel's face.

"You knew Rachel?" Max asks.

"She used to chill with us sometimes, but one day she just vanished…" Justin pauses, clearly high. "Hope she's living the dream somewhere. If anybody hurt her, we'll get a skater posse and take 'em out with our boards."

"Who was Rachel's punk friend?"

"Uh… I can't remember her name… But she was hot. Tats. Blue hair. Hardcore. She stopped hanging with us after Rachel disappeared… or ran away."

The flashback dissolves. It wasn't real, but totally sounded like Justin. "Can't remember her name." Paranoid pothead. Cagey as fuck.

It's almost six, so there's barely anyone around. One nerd is sitting under a tree with a book. A girl with Miss America hair is doing laps around the fountain while talking on her phone. There's a vaguely familiar green bike with orange handles by the entrance, but she can't place it. The girl with the phone sees Chloe and stops across the fountain from her. For a moment, Chloe reflexively thinks about fucking with her somehow, but then she remembers why she's there. It also occurs to her that Wells might be long gone by now, polishing off a bottle of expensive Scotch somewhere.

Wells, drunk, mumbling, looking for his keys in front of the boys dorms.

What the actual fuck would Wells be doing living in the dorms? Hello, real world. Or maybe… he was just going there for a visit? She rushes up the steps and through the doors, waving flashbacks and gross analysis away.

The admin is still in, which is a good sign. She's ready to call security, though.

"I need to talk to Wells," Chloe tells her.

" _Principal_ Wells is not available," the admin says. She's such a blank slate, Chloe gets the urge to tag her. She can't even figure out if the admin's new, or someone who's been there during her time at Blackwell. If she came back the next day, she probably wouldn't be sure if she'd spoken to the same person.

"Tell him it's about Rachel Amber."

The admin struggles, but she's no match for the power of Rachel's name. She picks up the receiver and speaks in voice too soft for Chloe to hear, pointedly. Chloe doesn't care. The admin hangs up, gets really involved with something on her screen for a minute, looks for something on her desk, "remembers" Chloe and says, "You can go in now."

Chloe goes in without a word.

Wells's office hasn't changed much. Good expensive furniture. Bad expensive art. Book shelves. Filing cabinets. That damned bird. She remembers the hallucination version of her acting like she's never been in this room. Product of a glitching mind. Confused by the weird duality of the thing, being Max and Chloe at the same time. Max would probably be the one who's never had the pleasure.

"Ms. Price," Wells says.

"Principal Wells."

"If only you were so determined to get into the school while you still attended here."

"Yeah. Thank god I didn't have a good reason to back then."

"Witty as ever. Now what is this about Rachel Amber? If you know something, you should tell the police, not me."

Like I would come all the way here to share it with you if I knew something. Get your head out of your ass, Wells.

"Two months back you took the best and the richest to the college game in Eugene. I want to know if anything unusual happened there."

"Unusual? I'm sure I don't know what you mean. And what does this have to do with Rachel?"

"Rachel never told me about going to this game."

"I'm sure there are a lot of things Rachel never told you."

"I'm sure you're sure about a lot of things. But what makes you sure about this?"

"Well, to put it bluntly, the difference between you and her."

"To put it bluntly, you can... Uh... So you're saying you noticed nothing unusual?"

"Not a thing. Especially since Rachel never even went to the game."

"She… what?"

"As far as I remember, she wasn't feeling fell, so she canceled at the last moment. You could check with her parents. Though I'm sure they have their hands full as it is. As do I, incidentally…"

"Oh yeah. Don't let me keep you. It's just a missing girl case. Not a donor or anything important like that."

She doesn't stick around for his reply.

Blackwell is in the energy-saving mode, so the empty hallways are twilit.

Chloe stops outside the office to get her bearings, but her mind is swirling with thoughts and memories and memories of memories that aren't exactly hers. Welcome to the fucking Vortex Club. She spots the poster for the stupid thing, and her hand reaches for the marker absently. There's the big trophy case on the other side of the hallway, full of inane, shiny things. She can't remember if that was there in 2010, but she does remember it was there in October of 2013. It being May 2013 now, it's enough to make you want to puke, if the trophies themselves don't do it.

Maybe that glass could use some street art, too…

Suddenly, a door bangs shut somewhere. The echoes roll through the hallways, followed by a faint sound of footsteps, gradually getting closer. For some reason, she feels like she just got off the bus in downtown Spookville. She feels something else, also, and it's this other thing that makes her stay in place and wait. It makes her want to light up a smoke, as well, but she's pretty sure that's, like, illegal, and the Sharon Stone Basic Instinct bit is not going to work for her. So she balls her hands into fists inside her pockets and waits.

Blackwell is not Pentagon, so the wait is no longer than twenty seconds. Still seems like twenty minutes.

But then it's over, and the man who comes around the corner is exactly who that other thing told her it would be.

Glasses, goatie, sports coat, down to the rolled up fucking Lees. Where have I seen this guy to know exactly how he looked, to see him that way in my dream? She doesn't have a memory, but she has some ideas. On the street somewhere; on campus; in a photo in a paper. Somewhere she didn't pay attention but her subconscious did. A snapshot of the guy and some serious resentment to make him into a scumbag he was in the hallucination world. The name picked up in a Blackwell brochure or a flier. All that's missing is a gun shooting her in the face.

He stops, surprised, looks at her, looks around.

"Everything OK?"

"W-what?"

It's all a bit too real. Her head spins; her stomach churns. The flashback of Max in the darkroom explodes in her brain, making her wince. Jefferson is shooting, ranting.

"Are you a student here?" The question reaches her, and she realizes the flashback is over. The anger and disgust are far from, though. She clenches the fists in her pockets until the nails bite deep into her palms. Kind of a good thing she didn't bring her gun.

"Former," she growls.

"I feel like I'm interrupting something. Are you here to blow the place up? Set it on fire?"

"No. Not today, anyway. Just had to see Wells about a friend. Zoned out a bit."

Zoned out into a really unfortunately timed flashback, in which you are a psychotic fuck.

"Ah, yes. The hallowed halls do have the… effect. Who's the friend?"

"Rachel Amber."

Jefferson inhales deeply and nods.

"Oh."

"You know her?"

"Of course I know Rachel Amber. I teach here. Wait a minute. You're Chloe Price, aren't you?"

"Now, how do you know that?" Fuck. Fuck. Did Rachel tell him? So maybe she did… So maybe he is…

"You're the mysterious friend of Rachel Amber. Kind of a hot topic, I guess."

Oh, really?

"That's funny. Nobody knew or gave a damn about me when I actually went here."

"Well, you know what they say. You don't know someone's true value until you lose them."

Her mind reels from how close to home that hits, and with the duality of Jefferson being the psycho creep in the drug dream versus the fact that nothing from that world has so far lined up with the real one, for a moment she just can't.

He waits for a polite moment, then proceeds to ask, politely, "So, any news of Rachel?"

"No. But I'm gonna find her. And if somebody hurt her…"

"I believe you will. Well, if there's anything I can do…"

"Have you… noticed anything unusual in the last couple of months? Anybody new she mentioned?"

"No. Have you?"

"She did mention she met someone. No details, though. Why I'm asking."

"I see. Yeah, no. I haven't heard anything about that. But if I do remember something, or hear, I can… drop you a line? By the way, my name is…"

"Jefferson. Yeah, I know. You're kind of a hot topic, too."


	8. Knife

She's back outside. Jefferson's gone. The book nerd is gone. Miss America is campaigning for world peace somewhere else. Sun is hanging low over the stadium, blazing straight into Chloe's face. It won't let her think. She hides behind the statue of Jeremiah Blackwell from the bastard. She can think now, but the benefits of that are very questionable. She didn't expect the stub to run out of juice so quickly.

Rachel didn't go to the game, but told parents she did. This creates about 10 hours unaccounted for. Where was she? Hanging out with her new boyfriend? Who was he? Someone at school really should know. Especially if Chloe Price is so famous. Who would she ask? Just random people at the dorms? Is there anyone at Blackwell Rachel was close with?

She wishes some of her old Blackwell buds were still around: Steph, Mikey, hell, even Drew. But Drew went off to college (Oregon State, if you can believe it) back in 2010, and the rest of the Norths all moved to Eugene (you can call them "the Souths" now) to be close to him. And Steph is living their Santa Monica dream in LA.

Would… Rachel contact her if she went down there?

Steph is straddling a bench, poring over the sketches and production notes. She's doesn't see Chloe, who just quoted Dante in the fresh concrete, until her black wings blot out the forest fire, and she snatches the clipboard from under Steph's dangling dragon necklace.

"Hey, Steph." Chloe says, plopping down on the bench.

"Whoa. Hey, Callamastia."

"Surprised to see me on parole?"

"I told you Wells was out to get you. The text was a rare courtesy, by the way. I don't normally get involved in other people's dumb decisions."

"Thanks for trying, but skipping yesterday was totally worth it."

"Hmm, skipping with Rachel Amber does have an appeal."

Chloe pulls out her phone.

-hey steph. It's chloe price.

There is no response for something like twenty seconds. She types:

-u hear from Rachel at all?

Twenty more seconds tick away.

Oh well, it was worth a try.

But as soon as she slides the phone back in her pocket, it buzzes. That magic of Rachel's name at work again.

-Chloe! Long time!

-hows cali?

-oh idk if I like it. There's like no rain or fog at all…

-hate you

-so what's this about hearing from Rachel? Was she supposed to send me a wedding invitation or something?

-no Rachel is gone. Missing.

There's a ten-second pause, then the phone begins to ring.

"Hey… Steph?"

"Hey. What's going on?"

"Rachel, uh… disappeared a couple of weeks ago. I thought… if she went down to LA, like… she… wanted, she might have tried to… Haha, shit. It was easier to type."

"You're saying no one knows where she is? The police are looking for her?"

"At least they say they are."

"Two weeks?"

"More like 18 days."

"And you're just telling me this now?"

"Uh, I mean… We haven't talked in like a year, Steph."

"So does that mean I'm not going to care about Rachel disappearing?"

"Ugh… no?"

"I'm going to get in a car and drive over there right now."

"What? No, Steph. It's like a thousand miles!"

"Of course it isn't! Hold on…"

Steph goes silent for a minute, and Chloe catches herself grinning like a fool. It feels good.

"Crap. It is." Steph says. "Why did I think it was like four hours away?"

"Cuz you're bad at Geography? Don't worry. I got this."

"I'll have to fly in…"

"Steph! That's crazy!"

"Rachel is missing, Chloe. What is crazy?"

"You just gonna drop everything, spend hundreds of dollars on a ticket and fly over here? To do what?"

"To help you. Support you. You're my friend. Rachel is my friend."

Chloe can't think of anything to say, so she groans loudly, to prevent herself from crying.

"Isn't it, like, finals season?"

"Yes, I'll have to head back on Sunday. So we better find her by then. But if not… I'll work something out."

"You are a crazy person, Stephanie."

"You call me that again, and I'll… I'll…"

"OK. I get the terrible implication."

"And you better believe it, too. I'll text you when I book the flight. You'll pick me up in Portland, right?"

"Does a bigfoot shit in the woods?"

"Ew. Later, Callamastia."

She sits and stares at her phone, feeling vaguely happy and like a shitty person at the same time.

"The girl is fucking insane," she says out loud. Where is she even going to stay? And where am I going to stay? Not going back home to attend a mandatory sergeant asshat lecture, that's for sure.

There's a rolled up sleeping bag in the truck that has seen a thing or two. It could use a tumble at the laundromat, and maybe some mending, but it'll work just fine for camping in May. Memories of the times that blanket was wide enough for two bodies sting her eyes, as she walks back to the parking lot. She's sort of afraid and thirsty for a flashback at the same time.

An orange envelope under her windshield wiper ruins the mood somewhat. A yellow sticky note on top of that reads: Glad you're back safe and sound, Chloe. OFC. Berry.

"Asshole."

She tosses the ticket and the note into the cabin and slams the door.

It's dark. She gasps at the sudden drops of rain, the noise of it rushing at her out of the darkness. There are tree trunks all around her. Tall, thin, disappearing into the dark rain. The rain washes away dirt, blood and tears. She doesn't know which way to go. There's a knife in her hand, its handle sticky. She drops it and runs.

"No!" She screams.

She's back in the truck, in the Blackwell parking lot.

"No, no, no, no, no."

The bag. She rummages through the duffel bag, then dumps everything out on the seat. The gun thuds to the floor. She picks everything up one by one. Shit, is that mud on that shoe? Does that shirt feel damp?

"No," she says, swallowing. "No fucking way."

There's no knife.


	9. Hatch

"OK, calm the fuck down, drama queen," she says.

For, like, the seventh time.

She's driving. Away from Blackwell and that, which is enough for now.

"You've had flashbacks of shit that hasn't happened yet, shit that will not happen, shit that happened 3 years ago. You remember multiple versions of the same past event. Now you got a flashback of something you have no memory of, either living or hallucinating. Annoying, but you already knew your brain got scrambled by Frank Special. This is just another proof you're psychotic. No big deal."

Good pep talk, Price. Except, where is the fucking knife?

"A knife?" Rachel echoes.

"Yeah. My mom took mine."

The sun is hot, and Chloe is sweating. Her legs ache from the climb. Thankfully, there's a slight breeze blowing off the ocean. And then, of course, there's Rachel.

"No…" Rachel says. "How about a nail file?"

"I guess you could stab someone with a nail file…"

Rachel makes a face like "Good one, Chloe (but not really)."

"Oh yeah. Sure. Let's try it."

She's back in the truck. Rachel is gone. Some day that was.

Did mom actually take the knife?

She tries to remember when she saw it last. Like definitely saw it. Held it.

The only thing she can remember for certain is learning to throw it against the tree in the junkyard, in the small clearing behind the old school bus, not too far from… where she was excavating earlier. Both, Rachel and her were drunk, and high, laughing and screaming in horror, as the knife bounced every which way, and cheering and hugging and… kissing, when it stuck. It was a wonder no one got killed, or lost an eye, but then, that was a daily wonder with them.

This was on her 19th birthday, nearly two months earlier, so not very helpful.

Still, the memory makes her smile.

After that, after that.

She didn't lose it there, did she? No way. She would have noticed it missing in the two months that followed. Probably would have found it back since.

She thinks back to the Three Seals. There was no knife there. No need for one. The gun was going to be the ticket.

Before that, then? Went to see Frank to pick up the drugs… Keep going back…

I must have been at home, packing some stuff, right? Stealing the gun from the rack?

She knows those things happened, but after a minute or several of denial, she has to admit that she doesn't remember any of it.

Fucking drug. Fucking Frank.

Well, they did happen, though, so maybe the knife is chilling, unremembered, in its usual hiding place: the sheath taped to the underside of the desk. She visualizes it. Long hefty blade. A rectangular crossguard. Leather-cord-wrapped handle. She pulled it out of the wooden beam at the burned mill 3 years back. She sees the knife in her mind, in its sheath, and it seems as if she can almost remember leaving it there…

Until a voice inside her head says, "Or… you dropped it in the woods somewhere, at some point in the last 18 days. What was that sticky stuff, you think?"

The craziest part is the voice sounds like Max. The smartass Max.

"Shut up," Chloe says, out loud, catching herself before she said "Hippie."

Not going to start talking to imaginary Max now. Been there, done that.

Wouldn't mind some advice from imaginary dad, though.

She hasn't had one of those dreams in three years, give or take. Ever since she and Rachel began hanging out.

But Rachel is gone now, and Chloe needs help to find her. Should be good enough reason for any ghost to start showing up again. If the ghost cares, that is. If the ghost existed, and wasn't just the product of her psychosis, that is. Though with the way things are going, dad will probably start showing up during waking hours pretty soon. Wait, that hasn't happened yet, right?

It is with these thoughts that Chloe realizes that the sound she's been hearing for a good minute is her tires on a dirt road. She stops in front of a low gate. NO TRESPASSING, a sign says. PRIVATE PROPERTY. Which in itself is nothing a hop, skip and a double-middle-finger salute wouldn't fix, but Chloe keeps the engine running.

Past the gate, the dirt road diffuses into an old farmstead. There's a big, dilapidated barn, familiar as fuck. There's a rusted carcass of 1930's Ford in the corner of the yard and rusted wagon wheels leaning against the fence and the side of the barn. There are probably rusted horseshoes and nails everywhere. The woods surround the farm on all sides, except east, where in the distance Chloe can see a house.

Everything is quiet. Down here under the trees, it's getting pretty dark. There is no sign of animals or people. No lights in the windows. The place looks perfectly abandoned.

Except that, which makes Chloe want to turn around and drive away.

There are tracks in the dirt, going right through the closed gate towards the barn.

For a while she just sits here, her mind blank.

"How did I even come here?" she asks the dashboard King.

He shrugs.

It occurs to her that sitting there waiting for the night to fall and the owner of those tracks to show up is not a very good idea.

She opens the door and pushes off like she's about to luge. Then she reaches back into the hastily repacked duffel on the passenger seat, fishes out the gun and tucks it into the waistband of her jeans behind her back. She feels like a TV cop, and an idiot. But no amount of self-deprecation can make her turn around and leave at this point. She knows she can't physically get back in the truck and drive away.

No fucking way.

Gate hopped, she advances across the yard towards the barn.

"Nothing exciting ever happens to us," she mutters under her breath.

A different flashback leaps at her from every lengthening shadow.

There's the red folder with "RACHEL" written along the spine. There's Mark Jefferson, saying sneeringly that the room is under 24-hour surveillance. There's Chloe Price spinning around with her gun, and a shot, and the blood, and the hole to another universe between her surprised eyes.

She stops. Listens. There's no sound. No birds singing. Not even trees rustling. She kind of wishes she left the engine running still. It's too quiet. Then an invisible owl hoots like right on top of her head, making her duck.

A fucking owl.

The gun is in her hand now. The next time that fucker hoots is going to be its last.

She checks the barn gate. It's locked with a padlock the size of her face. A bullet would probably be useless against that.

Maybe there's a hole in the old wall somewhere, say covered with a metal sheet, oh, around the left side? It's worth a try.

She does. There's no sheet. Nothing there at all, but the wall, solid, aside from the peeled paint.

Figures.

She continues around the house, hopping the low fence to get to the back. The wall is unbroken there, too, but the ground slopes down towards a brook and in one spot the earth eroded from the rains, leaving the boards of the wall to hover in space. The resulting fissure is too small for your average obese American, but a scrawny 19-year-old woman might just be able to squeeze through.

It's mud again, but fuck it. She lies on her back under the hole, grabs the edge of the boards and pulls herself up and through, until her head and shoulders are inside. She freezes for a moment, because she thinks she hears a sound. Then she does hear it, but it doesn't sound human. A rat , most likely. Or that goddamn owl plucking its feathers.

She reaches out with her arms and elbows and pulls again, inch by painful inch, until she's sitting on the edge, with her legs in the hole. The floor under her hands is strewn with hay. It's poky, but dry and kind of warm. She gets to her feet and pulls the gun out again. In her other hand is the phone-flashlight. The beam of it sweeps the empty barn. She can see crap piled along the walls and in corners, but she's not about to search for ancestral Prescotts.

She goes straight to the spot.

And trips over something halfway way there, flailing and falling on her face with a ridiculous little scream, which reminds her, even as she succumbs to gravity, of playing pirates with Max.

"Motherfucker!"

Tasting salt on her lips, she scrambles up and confronts the offending obstacle, ready to eviscerate it. It's a padlocked latch, formerly concealed under a layer of hay. And there's a hatch. It's not where it's supposed to me - nothing ever seems to be - but it is a padlocked hatch in an abandoned barn with tracks leading up to it.

A shiver that runs through her is so violent, she almost drops the gun. Overcompensating, she grips the handle until her knuckles turn white. A flashback of Max using ropes and pulleys and hooks and time powers comes, but Chloe is not in the mood.

She points at the lock and pulls the trigger.

The gun kicks hard in her hands. The discharge makes her ears ring. She feels a shadow over her and spins, terrified that someone is behind her, but it's only that damned owl, spooked, flying out of the window under the roof, its wings blotting out the last rays of the setting sun.

Surprisingly, the bullet hit the lock and made a mess of it. To be free of the latch, all it requires is a little push. The hatch is harder work, but eventually she manages to lift it and drop it to the side.

There it is. The steps leading down. The tunnel. The door. There is even a keypad.

It's fucking surreal.

She advances, not quite believing it, not quite sure if this is a flashback or reality, thinking that Max should be in this tunnel with her. That it's all wrong.

At some point she finds herself in front of the keypad.

There's no way this opens with 1337, she thinks. But what if it does? What if it does?

She raises her hand.

"What the fuck?" a voice says behind her.


	10. Lab

What the fuck?

"Chloe, look out!" Max's voice, so weak, fading.

And Chloe Price, spinning, fumbling with the gun, "What the fuck?"

BANG

But she's not in the junkyard in the middle of the night. It isn't a flashback this time. Just a memory of her death. This time, she's in the bunker corridor, in front of that goddamn door, and she's not going to be shot.

She's not going to be shot. Not this time. Not today.

No fucking way.

She needs to be faster.

Spin and shoot.

That's the only chance.

Be faster.

Duck.

She spins, but it's a terribly slow motion.

Come on! Pull the trigger! Shoot!

But it's slow enough for her to think, What the fuck? That wasn't Chloe's voice. He spoke. He was surprised.

Don't think. Just shoot.

Chloe Price, you are about to die.

She drops to one knee as she spins, like some kind of a movie cop again. Aiming will take too long. Better to just shoot and hope for the best. Even if she doesn't hit him, maybe the sound of it will give her an extra second to aim the second shot…

It's Frank.

It's fucking Frank Bowers.

"Whoa, Price," he says. "Calm down. It's me, Frank."

It's Frank.

His arms are spread. He's unarmed.

"Sorry, if I scared you. But now you can put that away and tell me what the fuck you're doing here."

He's slowly coming closer as he says this.

"Please step back," Max says.

She's pointing the gun at Frank. They are in the junkyard in broad daylight. Frank has a knife out. He's coming closer. Chloe Price, meanwhile, is frozen in place.

"You're kidding," Frank says. "Put that down."

Before Max pulls the trigger, the flashback winks out, leaving a weird fuzziness behind, vague half-images of someone else, somewhere, somewhen, who kept coming. Something red?

"Stop," she says, rising.

Frank's face looks like he smelled something unpleasant. He slows down, but doesn't quite stop.

"Come on, Chloe," he says. "I startled you. You screamed. But we're cool now. You know me."

"I didn't scream. I said stop coming closer," she screams, "or I swear I will fucking shoot you, Frank! I've done it before."

Finally, he stops, about three yards away.

She can tell he wants to say a lot of things, but to his credit he waits.

"OK," she breathes, regripping the gun with sweaty hands. "Now tell me why you're here."

"Why _I_ _'m_ here? I saw your rust bucket out there and was coming to ask you the same thing, when I heard the gunshot. I thought somebody shot your punk ass. Fucking worried about you, actually."

"I'm going to ask you one more time, Frank. Why are you here?"

"Listen. We go way back, but I'm getting pretty tired of this, Price. I'm here on business. Which is none of your business. Now why the fuck are you here with a gun?"

She says nothing for a while, then steps sideways with her back to the wall, gun pointed at his face.

"Open the door."

He scoffs.

"How about no?"

"Open the fucking door! If she's in there… If there's… I swear, if you did something to Rachel…"

"Wh... Rachel? God damn it, Price! You're looking for Rachel Amber here? Are you fucking insane?"

"Open the door and prove it, Frank. I'm getting really tired of holding this gun."

He's pissed now. Real pissed. He wants to punch her in the face. Or stab her. In the face.

She can tell.

He looks at the gun in her hand, at her face, the gun again, calculating. He doesn't like what he sees, clearly. He believes her. Still, he can't help but keep being an asshole.

"Idiot. You shoot me, you're never getting through that door."

The old tough guy act. Adorable at times, but Chloe is not in the mood. She pulls the hammer thing back until it clicks.

"I know the code, dipshit."

"How can you possibly know the code?"

"The same way I knew about the door. Now, do I need to count to three? Or just shoot you now and prove it?"

Frank's eyes are not scared, like, at all. They're shooting lasers. He also might lose tooth enamel from all the grinding. But finally, after a long time, he turns and punches in the code. The bastard covers it, though, so she can't confirm.

There's a loud metallic click, and the door swings out.

She steps behind Frank, the gun pointed at the middle of his back. She sees shelves. Shit on shelves.

"Go," she says. "Inside."

He walks forward without looking back at her, without saying anything.

The shelving is made of chrome wire. The shit on shelves is not food. It's like household cleaners and bleach and bug spray and baking soda and plastic bags and unmarked tin cans and fourteen other kinds of random nonsense. She doesn't get how any of it is supposed to save you, when the nukes fall. Where are the beans?

"You have serious balls, little girl," Frank says. "But hanging out with Chloe, playing with guns and dressing up like Rachel doesn't make you cool or tough. What the fuck do you want?"

He's in the booth at the Two Whales, a plate of beans on front of him. He looks like shit.

"How do you know these are Rachel's clothes?" Max asks.

"Because she looks beautiful in them, and you look like ass."

"Grab your keys and let's check out your RV…"

Wow, nice transition, Max…

Suddenly, she realizes Frank turned the corner and is out of sight. The vinyl strip door flutters to reassemble itself behind him. Chloe rushes forward to keep up, splitting the strips with the gun.

What she see through the clear vinyl and the gap between the strips are long tables full of beakers and burners, and stainless steel fridges along the walls.

"What the shit?"

It's all wrong. She doesn't understand. There should be a photo studio in here, not a fucking chemistry lab.

To make matters worse, while she stands there gaping, Frank jumps her from the side and takes the gun away. Together with her fingers, nearly.

It's another "gotcha" from the universe. Another "Sike!" Maybe the last one…

She closes her eyes and waits.

"No!" Frank shouts. "You keep those eyes open! Go on! Look for Rachel Amber, you goddamn idiot."

"She's not here."

"Of course she's not here! And if instead of me it was someone else, you wouldn't be here right now, either! You'd be in one of those freezers. Dead! And you had the nerve to point the gun at me. Threaten me!"

"I'm sorry, Frank. But I… I thought this place was... something else."

"Who told you to come here?"

"I… saw it. Like in a dream. And in this dream, Rachel was… hurt here."

"Holy shit! You're talking about the drug again, Price. You hallucinated! Is this your first time with hallucinogenics or something? What if you saw a goddamn golden unicorn at the police station? Would you break in there to free it?"

"It wasn't like a normal hallucination. It was... like I could remember the future."

"You just described a hallucination."

"It seemed real."

"Well, it fucking wasn't real, was it? There's no Rachel Amber here."

"But the place itself was here, Frank."

He chews on that one for a bit, shrugs.

"Coincidence. Happens all the time with mind-altering drugs. Patterns. The design. Anyway, we're done here."

Frank keeps the gun in his hand and shoves her towards the door. She takes one last glance around the room, in a desperate search for a clue, but there's nothing. It's obvious Rachel has never been there. Frank rolls his eyes at her tears, but doesn't comment, and does not touch her again.

He locks the steel door and covers the hatch with hay.

"You owe for the new lock I'll have to put on there," he says.

"OK."

Outside, it is dark. Stars are out.

"Who cares if the stars are dead?" Rachel asks.

The big barn door rattles. The lock clangs.

"Why did you take the whole bottle, Price?" Frank's voice in the darkness. "You want to die?"

"I… uh, did at the time."

He says nothing to this, until they're back on the dirt road. Frank's RV is parked behind Chloe's truck, blocking it.

"I don't want you to come here ever again," he says. "I don't want you to talk about this place, even in your sleep. I don't want you to remember that this place exists. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

"I'm keeping this." The gun.

"Hey, Frank?"

"What, Price?"

"You and Rachel… Was there ever anything… between you?"

He says nothing for a minute. It's dark, and her eyes have not adjusted, so Chloe can't see his face.

"Did you see that in your dream, too?"

"Not exactly. Just… hints."

"She was too young for me."

"I knew she was too young…" Frank says over the roar of the tornado. He's on the floor behind the diner's counter, hurt. "I knew she was going to leave me… Just not how it happened. I would never stop her from following her dreams."

She hears the RV door open and close, then the headlights come on, blinding her. She gets in the truck and starts the engine. Her phone buzzes.

Landing Portland 11:20AM tomorrow. Pick me up?

Steph.

Does a bigfoot shit in the woods?


	11. Plank

As she drives back into town, she actually keeps her promise to Frank and forgets about the lab, at least for the moment. She even forgets about Frank. What she can't stop thinking about is the hole in the barn's wall, in the wrong place, but there. The trapdoor, in the wrong place, but there.

What if… she dug in the wrong place?

It's dark, but now that the idea took hold, there's not going to be any sleep until she checks, anyway. She lights a cig and rolls the window down. The ocean breathes in the smoke and breathes out salt. Arcadia Bay Avenue is an artery of a beached whale. The red blood cells of taillights are too few, moving too slowly. It is about to die.

She glimpses a teal uniform behind the counter as she passes the diner. Joyce, back to pulling a night shift. Means David's home alone. Means Chloe Price is not going home for the night.

At the junkyard, she shuts off the engine and sits in the dark.

"Great," Rachel says. "It's a pile of trash."

"An awesome pile of trash," Chloe replies, exhaling smoke into the ceiling.

She can hear the ocean, and the trees whisper, and there's a cricket and a squirrel and a bird or two birds and some piece of loose garbage rings against something else every 1.5 seconds. Other things creak and slap. Compared to the farmhouse, the junkyard is teeming with life. There's no way...

No fucking way.

She tosses the dead cigarette and turns on the flashlight on her phone. Starting from the original dig site, which is frighteningly wide and deep (maybe it's the trick of the light), she begins to sweep the ground for other fresh disturbances.

"Beer and guns? Nice combo," Max says.

"You can handle it," says Chloe Price. "Now go find us five bottles? Pretty please?"

"I have to find dirty-ass bottles while you chill? Not fair."

"I have to prep the range, crybaby."

"And what exactly are you doing to prep the range? Standing there posing with the gun?"

"Well… I've also been tripping hard about where you got this rewind power…"

"From God. Or the gods. So, bow."

"We can make the world bow… Are you ready for that?"

"No way. I still don't even know how my power works or for how long…"

"Dude, you fuck shit up, you rewind, you fix it. Drop the mic. Boom."

"Spin, rinse and repeat… I'm just altering time and space. Oh yeah, and history. No biggie."

"You already altered history by saving my life, smartass. Let's see what else you can do…"

It sounds like Max and Chloe, or at least it sounds like Chloe and what Chloe thinks Max would sound like at 18, but otherwise the whole flashback is too stupid to ever happen. I have to prep the range, Jesus.

She goes from the hole in the ground to where the ghost doe posed for Max's photo, to where Max sat down to take a break from gathering the goddamn bottles, to where Chloe somehow carried unconscious Max to the hood of an old car, to where Max didn't shoot Frank. She walks slowly, sweeping the ground with the beam, sweeping her memories and visions, like some demented version of the Arcadia Bay lighthouse. The beam casts shadows that are creepy as shit, making every pile of garbage seem like it's moving, like something is about to crawl from under it.

"All we need is some horror movie music," she says, catching herself before adding, "Right, Rache?"

Then she does say it out loud.

"Right, Rache?"

Old habits die hard. Chloe Price and her imaginary friends. The only real friends she's ever had. Always coming back to comfort her when everyone else bails.

It's stupid, but better than no friends at all, right? Except Steph is flying in tomorrow, and also except she's not looking for imaginary relationships right now. What she actually prays for, is help. A sign. A communication. Not from beyond, because Rachel isn't dead (nevermind what she's sweeping the grounds for). Maybe… telepathy, or some shit. She always felt like they had that connection. Not that they could read each other's thoughts, exactly. More like, that they didn't need to. But maybe now they do.

So if you can hear me, Rachel Amber, Chloe thinks real loud, I could use some guidance. Counseling. Therapy, even. If you're in trouble, let me know where to look. And if you left… then... just give me a sign you're OK.

"Just tell me you're OK," she whispers.

She turns off the flashlight and waits.

The stars are out suddenly, about a billion of them. They tug at her, making her rise to her tiptoes. Her clothes flap, but gravity chains hold. The sky spins slowly above the crowns of trees, above all the junkyard sounds. It's really peaceful, and beautiful, but none of it feels like a sign that Rachel is OK. What it all makes her feel is stupid, and alone.

"Well," she says, "that genius plan didn't work."

She hesitates for another two seconds, turns the light back on, checks the battery - it's at 37 percent - and begins to sweep again.

"Ms. Price," a voice jolts her out of a daydream, familiar and annoying.

It's Wells, of course, glaring down at her from the top of the stairway.

"You are well-aware you can't park here. Do I need to call the police for you to move your… vehicle?"

She's parked at the curb. Nobody aside from that asshole seems to mind.

Chloe is about to let him know the lay of the land and what she's "Wells" aware of, but at that moment Rachel appears, sweeps past the principal, down the steps and into the waiting truck. Smiling sweetly, Chloe releases a fluttering blow kiss birdie and pulls away. Rachel, meanwhile, is struggling to keep a straight, innocent face. Two seconds later she's laughing.

"Oh, Price. That was a long-ass year."

"I don't know… Seemed pretty short to me."

"OK, delinquent. School's out for both of us now. Wanna just keep driving?"

"Sure… we have enough gas to get to the gas station maybe…"

"That's fine. Leave the truck at Arcadia Gas. We'll walk from there."

"OK, princess. Except you're not even healed yet. Low on blood and you still got stitches."

"Again you with the cold feet. "

"Hey, I just don't want to be stuck dragging you when you pass out from exhaustion."

"Are you sure that's all it is, Chloe?"

"What? You think I'm backing out? You know I wouldn't. It's just…"

"What?"

"Well, you got everything planned out. You know what you want to do, who you want to be. And I… don't."

"What, being Rachel Amber's bodyguard, chauffeur and companion isn't good enough for you, Price?"

"The job does have an appeal…"

"Well, it's there if you want it. But the point is, you don't have to want it or have it all planned out. You can figure it out on the road. Away from here."

The flashback is over. There's a boat in its place, with its own cargo of memories all the way up to the water line. What else is in the hold?

She props up the familiar pallet and climbs. The ship creaks and whines. There's the old pirate blanket crumpled to starboard, an ashtray full of butts to port side, bottles, cans, a pizza box. The boat was occasionally shack five yards away from shack. She searches and finds nothing but an old bra - Rachel's - which makes her cackle like a mad witch in the night.

It's time for a break.

She spreads the blanket and lights up a smoke and lies on her back. The boat creaks rhythmically. The stars wink. The smoke makes it seems like she's floating. Makes her forget everything.

Some time later, a meteorite shoots across the sky, breaking the spell. Chloe makes a wish without thinking.

She gets to her feet, letting a memory seep out through the cracks in the deck. It's a fake one. It's a memory of Max lifting an improbably large plank to get on board from the nearby bluff. She flashes the light over the bluff, but it's a bit too far for the beam to make anything out.

The side path that leads up to the bluff begins back by the gangster-mobile she had used as the backdrop for her "range." She weaves her way up there by the light of the flashlight. It's the very edge of the junkyard. In fact, the bluff was probably supposed to be a sort of a natural fence between American Rust and the woods, but the junk spilled over, as it does. There's an old fire pit and all kinds of hazardous shit, but most importantly, there's the plank. It looks even bigger than in her hallucination. It probably weighs a shit ton. There's no way Max would be able to lift it, much less throw it across the gap.

The beam skips and shivers along the wood, then freezes. Actually, it stops tracing the plank, but the shivering and skipping intensifies. What Chloe tries to keep with intermittent success inside the circle of light is a quarter-inch-long corner of bent leather sticking out from under the plank. It's literally the size of the tip of her pinky.

She moves the phone to her right hand and digs a finger into the earth under the plank until she hooks it behind the piece of leather and pulls, making more of it come out into the light. It's a brown leather strap, and it's causing the air to catch in the back of her throat.

She drops the phone in the dirt, holds the strap with one hand and hooks the other under the plank. The plank gives, but not enough. It's heavy as hell. She lets go of the strap for now, grabs the plank with both hands and digs her heels in. It rises a bit more.

"Fucking help!" She growls.

Slowly, the plank flips over the side.

She sits down, panting, and gropes for the phone. The light is noticeably dimmer, but bright enough to illuminate what was hidden. A fresh shallow hole in the earth, and in it, a brown leather backpack. The nicest backpack Chloe has ever seen. Rachel's backpack.

She grabs the bag and forces herself to get up. Back through the maze, towards the truck. Once inside the cabin, under the light of the same blue light bulb she had found around here about three years earlier, she puts the bag on the seat. Rachel's seat.

"The belt should be in here," she thinks.

She opens the bag - leather so soft to the touch - and looks inside. A photo catches her eye. It's Rachel and her dad, in hiking gear in the woods. Rachel must be like 10. She looks so happy.

Chloe was happy like that when she was 10, too. 14 is when it all went to shits.

She puts the photo back. Here's the belt, now.

Holding her breath, her heart pounding in her ears, she lifts the flap and extracts things one by one.

Wuthering Heights, Chemistry, a pair of notebooks, laptop, hair brush, a pouch of makeup, a red binder with Rachel along the spine.

No fucking way.

She powers through the fear and nausea, and cracks the red clam open. She recalls the binder as she does. She's seen it a thousand times. Rachel's portfolio. All of the better photos she had posed for. Nothing like the creepy shit she'd seen in her drug dream.

She would love to sit there for about a year looking at Rachel's pics, but she's got more important things to do. Time could be of the essence. Rachel could be…

No.

She pushes the binder off and rummages in the bag. There's nothing else in it. Nothing useful out of it, either. The laptop is locked. She unzips the makeup pouch. Inside, there's the usual garbage. She squeezes the bag in her hands and freezes.

There's something in the side pocket. Something rigid. She pops the button on the flap and sits there, staring at the leather-cord-wrapped handle.

It's her knife.


	12. Circles

Her reflection is a bespectacled king, wearing a ridiculous mustache a la step-douche. Behind it, the Blackwell bathroom is tagged floor to ceiling. All the words are backwards, but she knows them by heart. Them and the illustrations. The place is fucking TAGGED. Did she really do that? What did it take, total? Seven minutes flat? Her laughter is equal parts incredulity and pride. The baffled king approves.

"No wonder you got expelled, you dork," a voice says behind her, making her jump. "You absolutely ruined this bathroom."

She spins around, and there's Max, with her freckles and her hoodie and the shoulder bag, straight out of the hallucination, including the haircut that looks a lot like one specific old photo Chloe's got of them.

"That was before," she blurts out. Or was it after?

The walls are clean. The stall doors are clean. There's a janitor cart in the corner.

In the mirrors, the bathroom is still tagged, and there's no Max.

A blue butterfly is sitting on the edge of the bucket, raising and lowering her wings in slow motion.

"Go ahead, Max," she says. "Take the shot."

"I didn't tell my parents to move to Seattle to fuck you over, Chloe," Max says.

"I know," Chloe sighs. "It's just… I could really use a rewind right now."

"It's not all it's hyped up to be, let me tell you."

"Good enough for you to save my dumb ass, hippie."

"You know that wasn't really me, right?"

"Actually, in a weird, fucked up way, it was you."

The door flies open, admitting Nathan Prescott.

"As wicked dew as e'er brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you both! A southwest blow on ye and blister you all o'er!"

Prescott leans on the sink, looking at himself in the mirror.

"This is a girls' restroom, Prescott," Max says. "Get out, before I call Mr. Madsen."

"'Mister Madsen.' Do you think you can tell me what to do, bitch?" Nathan asks. Suddenly, there's a gun handle sticking out from behind his belt. Chloe knows there was no gun there when he walked in a second ago.

"Max. No."

Nathan pulls the gun out and points it at Max.

Chloe tries to get between Max and the gun, but she's in the restroom that's tagged, trapped on the other side of the mirrors. All she can do is watch.

"Well?" Nathan shouts. "Do you?"

"Get away from her, psycho," Chloe screams.

Max raises her hand.

The gun shoots.

"Max!"

She falls out of the dream flailing, knocking her shin against the steering wheel. Hard. Grabbing the sore spot with both hands, she spends a few seconds on her back, cursing.

Information trickles in slowly through the haze of her pain. She in the truck. At the junkyard. It's morning.

She bolts upright.

It's morning!

Shitting bigfoots.

The phone says 8:31AM. With a stop at the gas station, she's out of Arcadia Bay by 8:45. She gets to PDX by 11, parks at the curb and zones out, thinking about the dream and the flashbacks, thinking about the orange pill bottle and the knife, and about Rachel, until a cop tells her that she can't park there.

"I'm picking up a friend."

"So is everybody else. This is loading and unloading only. You can't park here."

"I just drove two and a half hours to get here. Now I have to drive in circles another half hour until she lands?"

"You can park in the lot."

"And pay the hourly rate of what? 20 bucks?"

"Look. You can do whatever you want, but you can't stand here for 30 minutes waiting. There's a million people trying to pick up those who've already landed. So move your vehicle!"

She has a couple of other things to say, but then it occurs to her that it might not be smart to antagonize Portland police with, like, half a case's worth of empty beer cans rolling around the cabin. So she shuts up and pulls away from the curb and circles at fifteen miles per hour. Her truck being what it is - a rare relic - and Chloe herself being not so common a sight, the cop clocks her every lap. She gives him one or two insincere thumbs up, but - to her credit - keeps the birds caged. On her fifth loop, Steph is standing on the curb next to the cop.

Jeans, sneakers, a red Arcadia Bay shirt, even a beanie. Was she afraid Chloe wouldn't recognize her or something?

Chloe cuts over two lanes, parking diagonally, and badly. The guardian of the Oregon law makes a move like he's about to unleash justice, but seeing Steph pull the door open and climb in, stays back and send justice with his eyes. The bird flaps against the bars of the cage, as Chloe pulls away with a look over her shoulder. The bars hold. That what you call maturity.

"Chloe Price, that is an amazing tattoo!"

"Fuck yes! Me and Rachel got tattoos… for her… 18th birthday. Anyway… And you, Steph Gingrich, bought no new clothes since your Sophomore year at Blackwell. Bootleg CD business not doing so well?"

"Sadly, it folded. I'm actually going to intern this summer. At Warner Bros."

"Well, shit. I might intern at Mike's Garage."

"Are you OK, Chloe?"

"Yeah, fine. No. Not fine. I'm scared and I'm worried, and my brain is not working right."

"Two brains are better than one that's not working right. Tell me everything."

So she does. Or near enough. Maybe. It takes the better part of the long drive along highway 6 and lunch at Frank's "famous" Smoke Shop, which sells smoked meat and fish instead of weed for some reason and which, fine, serves a pretty mean sausage. While they eat, Steph looks through Rachel's bookbag. There's no knife in it. Chloe moved that to the glove compartment, and out of her overall story. She can't tell why. She also doesn't tell Steph about the flashbacks she get regularly while driving. Kinda self-explanatory, that one.

That aside, it feels good to share, to unload the burden. Even to eat (Steph's buying). It makes her feel less crazy, even though she sounds like a strung out junkie.

By the time they pass that pulloff that offers the first scenic view of the ocean, marred with the blotch of Arcadia Bay, it's nearing 3 o'clock.

"The lighthouse!" Steph says. It's the first thing she said since Chloe finished her story, about twenty minutes earlier.

"So," Chloe segues in, "you think I'm a nutcase."

Steph shrugs.

"Among other things. But you're not a liar. Though I feel like there are things you're not telling me."

"What about that ticket?"

"The school trip? I don't know, Chloe. It's weird that there's a chunk of time she's unaccounted for, but maybe she just wanted to be alone. Maybe she hopped a bus to the next town, sat on the beach all day and ate ice-cream."

Maybe.

Maybe that's where she met that guy.

Or maybe she met him before and went there with him. To sit on the beach and eat ice-cream all day. And whatnot.

"You know what's weird, Steph?"

"What?"

"You know how I told you about Rachel saying she met someone, right?"

"Yeah, but…"

"Nevermind that. What's weird is why is he not looking for her?"

They've crossed into town now - that sign again - and Chloe flashbacks several times back and forth between the now and the future, in which she's just rescued Max from Prescott in Blackwell parking lot. It's always the same conversation, different versions of it.

"You came back to Arcadia Bay for a teacher... not your best friend."

"Don't you think I'm happy to see you?"

"No. You were happy to wait five years without a call, or even a text."

Steph is thinking, meanwhile.

"How do you know," she finally begins, "that he…"

"What? Like Rachel maybe never mentioned me to him, you mean?"

"No. No. Not like that, Chloe."

"He'd still be in town, don't you think? A new person, asking about Rachel. I would hear something."

"Arcadia Bay isn't that small…"

"Rose would mention it to me. He would have to go to Rose, at least, Steph."

Steph-Max is thinking, shrugging.

"Unless…"

"Unless… they left together."

Steph is making a face like sun is her eye, even though Arcadia Bay is about to get drenched.

"I was going to say unless they... uh, broke up by then and he went wherever, or, if not, then maybe he's just sitting back letting the cops do their job. Not everyone has it in them to go all PI like you."

"Yeah, not everyone cares like me. You think maybe they... broke up, though?"

"I mean, assuming they were ever... You said Mrs. Amber haven't even heard about him."

"Yeah, well, Rachel hasn't exactly kept her parents in the loop lately. Hell, who does?"

"I don't know. What's your theory here, Chloe? This guy kidnapped Rachel?"

Chloe stares straight ahead, watching this ridiculous theory take shape. There's no way Rachel wouldn't see right through that creep, is there? Was she really thinking that, or was it... hope? Fuck.

"Shit," she says. "I hope not. What about the backpack? Why bury it?"

"I don't know, Chloe. But it's all school stuff. Not super-useful or necessary if you're running away."

"What if you're not running away?"

"Then… I don't know. I don't get it."

"If you're not running away, then you'll still need the stuff, but it's heavy. So if you need to walk a mile or two somewhere, you hide it here, thinking to come back for it later."

"A creepy, dirty junkyard, though?"

"Hey, watch what you say about my kingdom!"

"Your what? Did you, like, hang out at this place?"

"Still do. We have a shack and everything. I'll show you. We're almost there."

"Uh… great…"

Once again, Arcadia Bay pans around its landmarks: lighthouse on the left, Blackwell on the right, the Two Whales, the water tower covered in graffiti - PRESCOTTS SUCK BALLS - everything ringed by green mountains and domed by glassy ocean and skies.

"Welcome home, Max," Chloe Price says.


	13. Crumpled

The Junk Shack is actually not the best idea, and not just because Steph keeps up a facade of polite curiosity, while saying things like, "Was that Harbor Inn just down the road there, or the Country Hotel?" Mainly, it's not a good idea because it makes sad Chloe sad again. It makes her want to sit down and cry, and watch the flashbacks like reruns of old shows on basic cable.

Her and Rachel tagging the walls. Her and Rachel decorating the place. Her and Rachel playing darts. Her and Rachel watching the stars through the holes in the roof.

Her and Rachel…

Tears come, so she kicks the table, hard, knocking over nail polish and empty beer bottles.

This has to stop. She can't be fucking crying every five minutes. She needs an enemy. A target to channel her rage at. This guy Rachel met is not good enough yet. Too vague. Too ghostly. She needs more information. She needs the ray of sun that will make his Polaroid fade in.

Steph, meanwhile, is very careful not to touch the junkyard during the tour with anything other than the bottoms of her Vans. From the way her eyes dart around, she must be expecting giant rats, mutated ants and radioactive green slime (poison +3) to start spawning out of the mud any minute now. It's actually kind of amusing.

"Oh shit!" Chloe screams. "What is that thing?!"

Steph jumps, but gets a hold of herself quickly, rolling her eyes.

"So funny, Chlo."

"So what do you think now?" Chloe asks, spreading her arms.

"Well… I think this place is a lot more… you, than Rachel. Sorry. Is that a bad thing to say?"

"No. Just a wrong thing to say. Rachel loved it here. Her vacation bungalo away from the square."

"I guess I'm the square, then."

"You're so square, you're actually cool. Except you're also queer."

"OK, Chloe. You win the lukewarm compliment competition. Can we go to that hotel now?"

"You sure you don't want to just crash here? It's cheaper…"

"Uh… no. I got a credit card. So… it's not like… real money, anyway."

As Steph exits, Chloe looks back over her shoulder. A sunbeam slants in through the roof and illuminates the graffiti on the eastern wall:

CHLOE WAS HERE  
RACHEL WAS HERE

"I was here," Max says, adding MAX WAS HERE to the wall.

And Chloe remembers and turns to the opposite corner of the shack, because that's where the bucket is. The bucket that no one ever looks in. The bucket in which Max, who wasn't there, found a crumpled up and heavily redacted letter, supposedly written by Rachel to Chloe, which made absolutely no fucking sense. The letter which hallucinatory Max, by the way, never even told that Chloe about. Like, hello? We gotta have a talk, Max.

A blue butterfly sits on the bucket in Blackwell bathroom, flapping its wings in slow motion.

She hesitates, sighs, stomps towards the bucket - decisive and brave, because the bucket is the enemy now - steps on the bottle that had fallen off the table, almost breaks her ankle, curses like a pirate, kicks the bottle, leans over the bucket to confirm what she already knows: that there's nothing in it, and freezes.

It's there. A ball of paper.

She reaches for it after a moment, half-expecting the flashback to end. It doesn't. She sits down and unballs the letter slowly.

The room darkens a bit. Steph has come back and stands in the doorway, saying nothing.

It's total madness, but the writing is in Rachel's calligraphic hand.

"I can't believe you, Price. Fuck! I spent a week working up the courage to talk to you, and you wouldn't even let me speak!

I can't do it, OK? The graduation. The plan. The life.

Us.

I'm eighteen!

I'm not ready to settle down. Get married.

In fact, I don't think I'm the marrying type.

I've been studying, working all my life. I want to laugh and be stupid and dance on the beach for about a year. I want what we used to do, but full-time. Not wait tables and pay rent. What happened to the roadtrip? It's been three years, and instead of climbing Everest we're over here planning adult life!

And yeah. I met a guy. A male, OK? He's older, and I like him. He seems so free.

Aw, 'He seems so free.' From the quill of Rachel Amber…

This is stupid. No wonder you stopped doing your diary three years ago.

Not that I'm trying to praise you, Price.

Fuck off, Chloe."

That's it. That's the letter. That's as far as Rachel managed to get before binning the thing. What did she do after that? Did she pace? Talk out loud instead of writing down the rest of her thoughts? Or left without looking back? Her new boyfriend waiting just outside? Both of them burying the backpack under the plank?

Chloe looks away from the paper, discovers Steph and, after a brief pause, hands the letter over.

Steph reads it, twice.

"So we got an older male," she says. "But no name."

"John Doe."

"Still, that's something." Steph "The Bright Side" Gingrich.

Max flashes by in a pink Jane Doe t-shirt, followed by several doe sightings, ghostly and otherwise. One of those stomps its hooves in the spot Chloe had excavated with her bare hands the other day.

I can't do it, OK?

When did it become Chloe's dream instead of Chloe and Rachel's dream?

"You're right, Steph. She probably ran away."

"I didn't say that. And you can't take that from this letter."

"What the hell else can you take from it? I met an older man. I love him. You suck, Price. Bye."

"No. There's no 'bye' anywhere. She tried to talk to you. When that didn't work, she came here and wrote the letter, but the letter wasn't really for you. That's why she tossed it."

"Who was it for then, Stephanie?"

"Herself. She was trying to write down her thoughts. To prepare for your next talk."

"It's a nice try, but you're reaching way far right now."

"You're just upset."

"Did you read the fucking letter? No shit, I'm upset! It literally says, 'Fuck off, Chloe.'"

"Well, you're not going to just stop looking, are you? Because let me tell you, if you do, I… I'll…"

"I'm not going to stop looking, Steph. Stop threatening me."

Chloe sighs in exasperation, but a grin is peeking through the clouds of her face.

Freaking Steph. Crazy person.

"That's better," the crazy person says.

Chloe rolls her eyes and takes back the letter, and suddenly she's a different person in the same place at a different time, and the letter in her hands is gibbering about "stink-eyes" and "hooking up on campus."

"Jefferson," she says, as she stumbles out of the flashback.

"Thomas? Airplane?" Steph asks.

"No, Mark Jefferson, the celebrity photography teacher at Blackwell. After your time."

"OK. What about him?"

"In this… dream that I… continue to have… He was… the man Rachel met. The letter in the junkyard was about him."

"Wait. You saw this letter in your dream?"

"Not this one. It was… different. But it was in the bucket. And Jefferson is older. In the dream he was this hardcore psycho. But… his dark room is not a dark room, but a meth lab instead…"

The more Chloe mumbles, the more concern deepens on Steph's face.

"Fuck, Steph. My head hurts."

"Why don't you sit down… Where it's clean."

Chloe plops down into the floor chair and looks up at Steph with pleading eyes.

"OK, now can you explain this again, in a way that I can understand?"

Chloe just sits there staring for a while. Then she pulls a smoke out of the pack and lights it.

"So this dream or whatever that I was telling you about, these flashbacks, they keep showing me things that haven't happened, and shit that never will probably, like time travel and whatnot, but then there are things that… sort of exist, also? Like, it showed me Rachel in the… ugh… buried, right? But when I went there and dug, there was nothing. But then, it showed me Max lifting this huge-ass plank, and I went there, and there was the backpack."

"Max?"

"Caulfield. My former best friend whom I haven't seen in about five years. In this dream she's a time-controlling superhero."

"OK…"

"Yeah, and so, there was a letter in that bucket in the dream, and although it was different, you saw the letter in this bucket, too. So, the dream is sometimes right, and sometimes wrong, and sometimes partially right, and I feel like I'm meant to decipher it all somehow to find Rachel, but it's all so fucking random that it's driving me insane."

"So Rachel is missing in the dream, too?"

"Yes, you could say that."

"And this teacher had something to do with it?"

"Yeah, he was this serial killer type and he had this apprentice, Nathan, who accidentally overdosed Rachel and shot me in the school bathroom."

"Nathan… not Prescott, was it?"

"Oh yeah, you knew him."

"Mostly of him. Loads of money and a nightmare of a dad."

"Yeah, in the dream he's completely lost it. You know, I wonder if the shit happening in his head was something similar to what's going on in mine right now."

Steph stands in the middle of the shack looking around for a while.

"I can imagine it must be very confusing for you, Chloe, but the way I see it, if your brain brings us closer to a clue that brings us closer to Rachel, then it's good, right? We should use everything at our disposal."

"But what do we do next? Where do we go from here? I can't tell up from down."

Steph looks up and down and says, "Can we go to a hotel now, please?"


	14. Questions

The view from the top of the water tower is not much. On the left, the mansions of the rich part of Arcadia Bay stare like amber-eyed wolves at the glowing white orb of the Blackwell clock. You can hear their distant howling in the wind. Straight ahead, beyond the swath of dark woods, is the hoi polloi quarter and the Arcadia Bay Avenue, with all its gas stations and liquor stores and pawn shops flickering like their power is being cut off for unpaid bills. Two Whales Diner is in the middle of that, its aluminum reflecting the light cacophony, its own neon sign displaying some pattern lighting that was high-tech back in the 80s.

There is the infinite, badly stitched scar of the railroad. There's the beach. There's Frank's RV in its usual spot.

The right half of the world is the ocean, stretching on forever, still and solid like a mirror, reflecting the sky full of stars and the Milky Way that's arching back eastward across the glass dome, to the wooded hilltops and beyond.

Fine. It's pretty, but who gives a shit?

Behind her and the tower, invisible but for the beam of its sweeping, all-seeing eye, is the lighthouse.

Is it really looking, or is it just going through the motion, like the rest of the town?

She climbs down the rusty ladder, looks up and nods at her handiwork.

WHERE IS RACHEL AMBER?

Wake up, dipshits. Wake up and pray that when I find her, I won't have the same choice to make that SuperMax did in my headtrip.

That's not the only question, of course. Far from it. The water tower is not big enough to fit them all. Is Jefferson Rachel's "older male"? Is Nathan Prescott involved? What do Frank and the underground drug lab have to do with it all? On and on, and on.

And then there are the other questions. Questions that she would not graffiti for all the town to see. Questions she's not that eager to face even in private.

Why was her knife in Rachel's bag? What was that vision of her in the woods about? What did she do for two weeks between Rachel's disappearance and her participation in the study at the Frank Institute?

Those are the kinds of questions that make you climb the water tower to be alone, hoping for - and dreading - a flashback that would provide another clue. Which doesn't come, of course. Not when you need it. The flashbacks she gets while tagging the tower are pointless, random, kind of annoying.

"Bitch straight up lied to my face!" Chloe Price shouts, speeding south down Arcadia Bay Avenue, away from the Two Whales and that filthy RV.

There are two moons in the sky.

"What is that?" Max says. "Jesus, Chloe, look up at the sky!"

"Beautiful. I don't give a shit. The world is ending. Cool."

"You're not listening! Something major is going down!"

There's a big splash, as some kid cannonballs from the plank.

"Rachel Amber won't be coming, either," Max shouts over the music.

Justin winces. His red eyes regard Max uncomprehendingly.

"Damn, I was just thinking about Rachel and Chloe tonight… If they showed up together right now, shit would end. Rachel could always shut Victoria down."

"You want me to cut you, bitch?"

Chloe stabs Frank. Chloe stabs Frank.

Now, looking up at the tower and the sky, she gets another one.

"Are you sure you don't want to catch a bus, or…?"

"Nope," Rachel says. "If we're gonna skip, we're gonna do it right."

Rachel is wearing a blue flannel shirt torn at the shoulder and black jeans, making both look like they came from a Paris boutique. The two of them are standing under the same water tower, in pretty much the same spot Chloe is now, next to the office of the pointsmaster, or whatever the hell this box of concrete once was. There is no pointsmaster in there now, and there hasn't been one in like ten years. A northbound freight train is slowly passing by.

"Come on!" Rachel shouts.

They run.

When the flashback winks out, her heart beats like she's still running. She follows the railroad out of the woods, crosses the deserted street, passes the plain white building of the True Cornerstone Church, and walks over to Harbor Inn, a block away. The white and red sign with the arrow - Parking! Jacuzzi! - flickers like the rest of the town. Like it, too, is on the verge of winking out of existence.

Steph is in the Lotus position on the bed, with her notebook in her lap. Her spiral notebook. Retro, worthy of Arcadia Bay.

Her hair is jacuzzi-wet, but she's wearing the same clothes.

"How'd it go?" she asks.

"Come and see."

They walk out into the Parking! lot. Chloe crosses her arms on her chest.

"Wow," Steph says. "So bad. And impressive. I could never climb up there."

"Well… I could never be a Dungeon Master."

"Everyone would be dead in about fifteen minutes, I'm guessing."

"Five. So what have you been up to?"

"I'm just trying to outline the case."

"Oh… the what?"

They come back inside. Steph opens the notebook page and turns it around towards Chloe.

There's a numbered list:

1\. Older male (Mark Jefferson?).

2\. Letter.

3\. Backpack.

4\. Drugs

5\. Ticket to the game

6\. Knife. Except "Knife" is not on the list, because Chloe never told Steph about the knife.

Why not? What exactly made her omit the knife? So what that it was in the bag? Why does that scare her?

She can't say, even to herself, and that pisses her off. The fear is the enemy now. So fuck fear.

She takes the pen and adds the knife to the list.

Steph raises her eyebrow.

"What knife?"

"I found the knife in Rachel's bag. My knife."

"Was there…?"

"Blood? No. Fuck, no. Clean. But I was still too chickenshit to tell you about it."

"Why?"

"I don't know why, Steph. I don't know why the knife was in that bag. I don't know why I'm scared that it was. I keep thinking that maybe I know why, but the drug made me forget it, or… I'll have a flashback and remember, and…"

Damon Merrick stabs Rachel in the arm. Chloe sees it coming from about a nautical mile away. From the moment Rachel conjures a two-by-four and turns an increasingly frightening conversation into a battle. Chloe watches Rachel swing and connect, and Damon fall and drop the knife, and Frank trip and fall, and knows. She watches Rachel dial up another swing, and she watches Damon's hand grope in the dust for the knife, but it's like she's trapped on the other side of the mirror. Trapped in the block of ice.

Like she isn't even there.

Knife dripping. Horns. Dark jacket. Arcadian…

Chloe, Who Wasn't There.

"Let's just work the case, step by step," Steph says.

"Huh? The case? Oh, yeah. Number one: older male. So. We can tail Jefferson and see where he goes and what he does, but first we have to find out where he lives, which I guess shouldn't be that hard? Except, it might not be him at all, seeing how we have nothing but my trip vision to go on. Oh, and the letter, step two, which mentions that the man is older, which we're young, so nine out of every ten males in this dumbass town are older. And then there are out-of-towners. Fuck.

Sorry, Steph, I'm a bit overwhelmed here. I know you're here to support Detective Price, but can I be Watson to your Sherlock for the next five minutes?"

Steph frowns at the list, looks at Chloe, then at the backpack on the floor. Silently, she picks it up, dumps the contents on the bed and pushes the laptop towards Chloe.

"Let's start by you hacking that."

"I'm not a hacker, Steph," Chloe scoffs.

"All you have to do is guess her password, Chloe. You know Rachel better than anyone."

Do I, though? Chloe thinks. She rolls her eyes at Steph, but her hands are spinning the laptop around, opening it. The user: Rachel Dawn Amber. The password field is waiting.

She stares at it hatefully.

"Ugh. What do I do?"

"Just start typing. Try things."

She types "password." How dumb. Rachel would never.

RachelAmber.

RachelDawn.

ChloePrice. Yeah, right.

RachelChloe.

RachelMark. Ugh.

She keeps going, though. Going through a million ridiculous combinations. Getting frustrated and sometimes blushing (AmberPrice69).

"What do we have here?" Max says, pulling a sheet of paper from the behind the visor of David Madsen's car. It's a receipt from Two Whales, dated 11-27-08, for eggs and sausage, toast and coffee. Come Sea Us Again! Your Server: Joyce

On the back, there's a note from Your Server Joyce:

"It was an honor having you in the diner.

Nice to know that gentlemen still exist. Love to talk again with you soon.

BTW, the name is Joyce if you forgot :)"

If the note itself isn't enough to make her vomit, the acronym and the emoji might just do the trick.

"That might be a useful password…" Max says.

"Bullshit is what that might be," Chloe says out loud. "Why would Rachel…?"

She stops there, registering Steph's face.

"Don't worry about it," she says. "Just thinking out loud."

"No worries at all," Steph says, insincerely. She pulls out her phone and dives inside, for comfort.

There's obviously no way Rachel would use the date Joyce decided that a day short of two months was a suitable grieving period for a proper widow. Once again, the flashback was zero help. Probably…

RachelAmber722

Rachel722

Amber722

ChloePrice311

"Fuck!" She snaps, making Steph jump. "Sorry."

What's your password, Rachel?

Rachel is on one knee, Chloe's hand in hers.

"For but a little longer, I beseech, continue in thy service to my schemes. And when they are complete, I swear to thee: we shall fly beyond this isle, the corners of the world our mere prologue. I'll seek to make thy happiness so great that e'en the name of liberty's forgot. What sayest thou to my most hopeful wish?"

"Yes," Chloe whispers, back at the Inn.

Tempest

TheTempest

Tempest050810

Chloe shrieks.

The laptop screen turns blue. Words appear: Welcome, Rachel Dawn Amber.


	15. History

The laptop yields no smoking gun, no treasure map, no dear diary explaining everything. It's full of mundane school stuff: homework, schedules, research projects (Flora and Fauna in Native American Mythology of the PNW), play scripts, notes on Wuthering Heights ("Catherine and Heathcliff - How Are They The Same" is the actual name of one of the files).

The email box is full of unread spam, and judging by their number and timestamps, the email hasn't been checked in, oh, about two weeks and a half? Which means... no, it doesn't mean that.

The search history is straight up fucking with her. It shifts and slips and jumps from flashback to memory to who knows what.

 _Arcadia Bay Golf sale_

 _Pan Estates land deed_

 _property insurance fire illegal_

 _sera gearhardt_

 _culmination park fire cause_

 _time travel possible?_

 _I'm about to binge on "Quantum Leap"_

 _biggest cloud in history_

 _thunderbirds and the water spirits_

 _congrats to wonderful cast and crew of the Tempest!_

 _chaos theory_

 _ _How to clear browser history?__

 _Hey Steph, any update on Mikey?_

It makes her want to throw the laptop at the wall. And to throw up. Before she succumbs to either or both, she pushes the worthless thing to Steph and gets up to go smoke outside. Steph nods and takes over with the gusto of an overpaid federal agent.

There are only two other cars in the motel's parking lot. All the windows are dark. Everything is quiet. A single moon is rising above the eastern hills. The ocean breeze makes Chloe shiver, as she lights a cigarette. She gets her denim jacket out of the truck and puts it on. To the left, the water tower and the question float above the swaying trees.

The sound of the truck door slamming shut echoes like a bolt of Zeus's thunder. She kicks the poor tire and burns half a cigarette in one drag, but it's not helping. Tony's is just around the corner, a thought comes. A six-pack might do the trick. Or maybe a flask of Jack. Or both.

Yes, now that she's well over the exuberance of the successful start to her hacking career, Chloe is upset.

Why did she have to use that as her password?

Why didn't she change it?

It might have meant something once, but now? Habit?

How long have I been a habit for her?

How long have _we_ been a habit?

"My habit's been to keep my soul well-draped," Rachel-Prospera says.

"Oh, shut up!" Chloe shouts. "Don't talk to me like you're… talking to me!"

A light comes on in the room next door. Chloe flicks her cigarette in its direction and storms back inside. Steph's acting like she hasn't heard.

"I'm losing my mind, Steph," Chloe says. "It's embarrassing."

"You wanna talk about it?"

"Nah. Better tell me you found something."

"How about 'Show, don't tell'?"

Steph turns the laptop back over to Chloe. Displayed full-screen is a picture of Rachel on a motorcycle. It's an Indian, with tassels on handlebar and a red-and-white fuel tank. Unfamiliar. Rachel is posing, as only she can; a perfectly random and spontaneous combination of bent and stretched limbs, arched back and tilted face that would make anyone else (Chloe, for example) look like a perfect idiot, but on her makes it seem like she was captured in the midst of a beautiful dance. She's wearing blue jeans, leather ankle boots and a brown leather jacket. In the background there's a bush and a tree and a grassy slope. Could be anywhere. Could be Blackwell parking lot. A dark-visored helmet is sitting on the grass next to the rear wheel.

"I would join a motorcycle gang," Chloe thinks to herself, staring at a row of parked bikes at the abandoned mill. "If I had any friends."

"Is Jefferson a biker?" she asks.

"You tell me," Steph says. "Too bad he isn't in the photo."

"Oh yeah," Chloe says and chokes a little. "Too bad."

Something in the visor catches her eye. She zooms in as close as she can. There's a figure of the photographer, too blurry and vague to even tell if it's a man or a woman, but there's also a wire fence and a piece of a blue rail.

"I know this place."

"What?"

"Where this picture was taken. This is at the skate park. See that rail? I hurt myself too many times on that to not know it."

"Awesome, Dr. Price. So… what's next?"

"Skate park means Justin Williams."

Justin refuses to respond to texts at 2AM, and Steph, although stoic, looks like she's about to keel over. They agree to let the case and themselves rest until morning. Steph proceeds to keel over, while Chloe lies on her bed staring into the darkness.

John Doe the Free Man.

John Doe the Biker.

John Doe the Photographer.

John Doe the Older.

John Doe the New Flame.

John Doe the replacement for oppressive, clingy Chloe Price.

Is he, doe?

Rachel posing. Maybe for him, but posing. Just posing.

John Doe the Darkness.

The next light she sees is of the buzzing, flickering, fluorescent variety.

Sinks, faucets, soap dispensers, foggy mirrors. She spins around, thinking she's back in the Blackwell bathroom, but not quite. There are curtains instead of stall doors. The middle one is pulled to the side. On the white tile wall, in black permanent marker that is so like the marker she uses to tag shit, there is graffiti reading:

RACHEL AMBER IS A WHORE.

Blackwell girl dormitory showers.

She's wearing teal pajama pants and a white t-shirt. She's barefoot.

The curtain on the right is closed. There's a sound of running water. Steam billows up from behind it.

"Hello?"

The door slams open, making her jump.

Brown leather jacket. Gold chain. Gelled up hair.

"What the fuck are you doing here, Prescott?" she demands. "With a gun?"

He's pointing the gun at her face, though he wasn't a moment ago.

"It's my dorm," he says. "What the fuck are you doing here? With a gun?"

He's right. There's a gun in her hand, too. She tries to raise it, but it slips out of her fingers and falls to the floor with a loud bang. She bends down to pick it up, but it's gone.

"I'm… uh… looking for Rachel…" she says.

"Looking for Rachel," he repeats, mockingly. "Why? Do you miss her? You could never keep her, anyway. You can't even hold on to your gun. I bet no one's going to miss _your_ punk ass."

"Get that gun away from me, psycho!"

"Never come on my property and tell me what to do, bitch!"

"Stop it, Nathan!" a voice behind her.

Max?

No. It's Steph, wet-haired and dressed in shorts and t-shirt with a bright yellow chick on it, stepping out of the steaming stall.

Prescott draws back in surprise, his gun twitching between the two of them now.

"Oh, great! Another dyke trying to tell me what to do!"

"Steph, no!"

But Steph is not listening.

She seems to slip on the wet floor, except instead of falling she reappears next to Nathan, slapping the gun away with her left hand and then, with a shocking yell, absolutely unloading on his chin with the bottom of her right foot, in a completely bananas display of kung fu.

Prescott's designer shoes come up level with Chloe's face, as he flies back and out of the door he's just barged in through.

In the room 113 at the Harbor Inn, Chloe Price wakes up from her own laughter.


	16. Rattle

In the morning they drive two blocks to the Two Whales. The place is Chock-o-Crisp-full of regulars, including Anderson Berry, a nurse in scrubs, whose face is about to crack in two from all the yawning, a gaggle of special Blackwell kids Chloe doesn't know, and a couple of truck drivers. All that's missing is a certain local drug-dealer. Everybody stops chewing when Chloe and Steph walk in.

"Hey, Chloe," Officer Berry calls. "Got a minute?"

They all wait, including Steph, who halts in the middle of the aisle, awkwardly. Chloe's fresh out of minutes for local police, but she makes an effort, for Steph's sake.

"Honestly, Officer Berry? I probably heard it all from mom already. And I'm pretty sure I'll be hearing all about it again from the step-… David. So can we just skip to the part where I promise you it'll never happen again or something?"

The policeman grunts, glares at the gawkers.

"Do you all mind?"

They turn away, reluctantly. The din resumes. Officer Berry lowers his voice.

"Listen, I'm just saying we don't need another girl to go missing in this town," he says.

"Nathan said that Rachel Amber represents Blackwell… with Frank Bowers," Max replies.

"Bowers ain't no student anymore. Sadly, he does represent one side of Arcadia Bay. I want you to stay out of his orbit, OK? Him and that rabid mutt…"

"Oh, I heard something about Frank Bowers and his puppy," Max says. "The boy does love his dog…"

Fuck the boy and his dog, Chloe forces her own thought through the flashback. Rachel! You were looking for Rachel!

"How is the search going? Got any leads?" she asks, back in the real world.

"Well… we're doing everything we can. But in a case like this, the main thing you can do is send out the information and wait for someone, somewhere, to recognize the person and call it in."

"And since you're waiting anyway, might as well wait in a diner."

"OK. Now, I know she was your friend…"

"No," Chloe says, walking away. "She _is_ my friend."

Officer Berry winces, shakes his head, and returns to his plate. Chloe drops into the last empty booth. After a pause, wide-eyed Steph joins her.

"This fucking town," Chloe says quietly, to no one in particular.

Joyce comes over. Thankfully, she doesn't start about the cop, though Chloe's sure she's eavesdropped on most of that conversation. Joyce just seems glad to see Chloe alive and in town, and not alone.

"Mom. Steph Gingrich. Steph. Mom."

"The name is Joyce. It's nice to meet you, Stephanie."

"It's Steph, mom. She's visiting from LA."

"You look familiar. Didn't you go to Blackwell with Chloe?"

"And Rachel," Steph says.

"Oh, Rachel," Joyce says, and nothing else.

Steph orders Belgian Waffles to get rid of the awkward pause. Chloe opts for "eggs and bakey." She would love to wake and the other bakey, but there is no secret roach left, and her dealer will sooner shoot her on the spot, than spot her a dimebag. And anyway, Officer Berry told her to stay out of his "orbit."

"Don't let Chloe get you in trouble," Joyce says. "And let me know if you need anything else."

She leaves them with that.

"Oh, shit. It's the weird lady!" Chloe hisses.

"What? Where?"

"Over there in the corner. Don't look!"

"OK… So, what's weird about her?"

"Oh… Well… it's kind of hard to… It's just something I remembered from… Ugh. Nevermind."

"Hey, Chloe? Don't you think we should give the book bag and the laptop to the police maybe?"

"Why? So we can spend the rest of the weekend answering a million stupid questions, just for them to end up burying the stuff in the basement with the rest of the evidence?"

"They might be able to find something we can't. Like fingerprints…"

"Dude, this isn't CSI: LA. You heard our finest over there. The only things Arcadia Bay cops are trained to find are those pancakes every morning and their monthly contributions from the Prescott Foundation. When it comes to looking for people, they're doing the best they can. Waiting."

Steph shrugs. Joyce brings their food.

"What?" Chloe asks, once Joyce is out of earshot. "Do I sound like an idiot?"

"I know you're not an idiot, Chloe Price. I just wonder if your previous experiences get in the way of your decision-making sometimes."

"You take that back, Gingrich."

"I'm serious. We need all the help we can get. Rachel needs…"

"OK. This isn't what Rachel needs, Steph. Not for us to get stuck explaining where and how we found it and what else we know. We are the only ones who are actually trying. We can't be off the streets. I can't be..."

They stare at each other silently for a minute, until Steph sighs and relents.

"OK. You're right. For now."

They eat.

"This is still pretty great," Steph says, with her mouth full.

Chloe pushes her bacon around the plate.

A few minutes later, Steph pulls out her wallet, but Chloe waves it away.

"Nah. You paid for the room. This is my treat."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I insist."

"Well, thanks, Chloe."

When they get up to go, if Steph notices that Joyce never brought the bill, she doesn't mention it.

"Let me drop these off," Chloe says, taking the plates back to the kitchen.

"David went back to work yesterday, too," Joyce says to her, habit or stubbornness, Chloe can never figure out.

"Stop the presses," she says.

"Hey, Chloe," Joyce goes on, ignoring the sarcasm, "since you're here, can you take this paper bag to the lady in the back?"

"The crazy homeless lady?"

"She's not crazy."

"Why doesn't she come inside and eat, then?"

"I guess she's embarrassed. And doesn't like people…"

"Likes to eat for free, though, huh?"

"She's not the only one."

Chloe coughs, blushes, mumbles, "At least I come inside."

Then she grabs the paper bag and stomps out the back door.

The homeless lady is sitting on a flattened cardboard box in the corner between a wire fence and sheets of old metal roofing no one bothered to dispose of properly. There's a box of Skweekinax next to her, and a paper cup, which is probably not coffee.

"Have you met Joyce's daughter?" Max asks.

"Cute girl," the homeless woman says. "Pissed off. I used to see her and her pretty friend, er… Rachel, around a lot."

"Do you know anything about Rachel Amber, that missing girl?"

"I know she's missing. And I know she hung out here a bit. Sometimes I'd see her walking, all by herself, deep in thought. Too damn young and pretty to look so worried…"

"Was she alone a lot or with friends?"

"Like I just said, she seemed tight with Joyce's daughter. I thought I saw her with an older gent one time, maybe her dad. That's a terrible thing for a parent to deal with. I pray the poor thing is alright. But you can't save everybody."

"Seen a ghost, child?" the homeless lady speaks in a hoarse voice, making Chloe realize that the flashback's been over for a while, and that she's been zoning for just about that long.

"Huh? No. Sorry. This is for you, from, uh… mom."

She hands the bag over, feeling somehow jittery, insubstantial, like she's reaching across realities.

"Joyce is my angel," the lady says, making it worse, "even though I really don't deserve this."

"What?"

Fuck, if I get another flashback right now…

"Listen," Chloe blurts out, feeling really stupid, "by any chance you know anything about Rachel? I mean, I'm sure you know she's missing, but… have you seen anything… weird? Or her with anyone new? An 'older gent,' maybe?"

The lady cackles.

"Ha, that's a good one! You don't spend as long as I have in this town without seeing a weird thing or two, girl. This is Arcadia Bay. Wait, but an older gent, you say?"

"Yeah?" Chloe echoes the intonation, disoriented.

"Well, I did see her with an older gent once. Has to be over a month ago now, though."

"What? Really? When? Where? What did he look like? Was it her dad?"

The lady squints and raises her hand.

"Calm down. You're giving me a headache. No, it wasn't her dad. Some guy taking pictures."

"What'd he look like?"

"It's been over a month, I tell you. And they were kinda far. See, it was a bit of a cold spell that day, so I went over to Tony's to warm up. So I'm standing by the parapet behind the store, just looking at the sun setting over the sea, and I spot them off a ways to the left, towards the docks. But I mean, Rachel you can tell right away pretty much at any distance. The gent, though? My eyes aren't what they used to be. Older, yeah? Glasses, I think. Goatee, maybe? Camera."

"Was he dressed like a hipster?"

"Girl, I don't even know what that means. Don't remember his clothes, neither."

"Shit, well, that's a lot, anyway. Thanks."

"Why? This was way before she was gone. You think this man had anything to do with her?"

"I don't know. I wanna find him and ask him."

"Well, I hope it helps you find her. But..."

"Yeah, thanks again. Oh, did you happen to see a bike with them that time?"

"A bike? What bike?"

"An Indian, like this."

Chloe shows the photo she took from the laptop with her phone. The homeless lady looks at the phone like it's a skunk's ass, shies away, and shakes her head.

"No, no. There wasn't any bike there."

She opens the bag and get busy rummaging inside.

"OK. Enjoy that," Chloe says, before walking away.

As Chloe comes around the diner's corner, Steph is leaning on the newspaper machine, reading an issue of The Beacon. The sun is high, and it's getting pretty hot.

"Bet they don't have those in LA anymore," Chloe says. "It's all flying cars and holograms."

"And blue-haired replicants."

"Probably nothing there," Chloe writes in her unsent letter to Max back in 2010. "I think I just want her bangs."

"Anything about Rachel?"

Steph shakes her head.

"No, mostly about how there's no fish in the bay."

"Oh, yeah?" Chloe asks, without the least bit of interest in her voice.

She squints towards the western horizon, brings the phone up to her ear and waits.

"Yo, Justin."

"Chloe Price, the man, the myth…"

"Definitely not the man."

"It's an expression, Price. What's up?"

"You at the park yet? Need to talk."

"It's Saturday, the sun's out… Hell yeah we're at the park. These rails won't destroy themselves."

"Alright. I'll see you in a bit."

"Hey, Price, wait. What's this about?"

"Rachel."

"Oh. Yeah, OK. See you soon then."

On the way back to the truck, Chloe tells Steph the gist of her conversation with the homeless woman.

"That is great stuff," Steph says. "Does that description match anyone?"

"Sounds hella like Jefferson. She really didn't seem to like the bike, though. Was weird."

"Maybe a bad memory."

"Yeah, maybe she's had trouble with bikers in the past. Or maybe she's just a crazy homeless lady," Chloe says, twisting the key.

As they leave the parking lot, an RV rattles in from the street. Frank doesn't make eye contact.


	17. Obstacles

The skatepark is on the south edge of town, behind Arcadia Mills Shopping Center, which is really just a strip mall containing SAV-MART, Arcadia Pawn, and Up All Nite Donuts. Two blocks to the west and about four and a half years into the past, at the intersection of Arcadia Bay Avenue and Peckinpah Road, William Price slows down to make a left turn. He sees the logging truck out of the corner of his left eye, but his light is green, so he's only vaguely aware of it. William has a lot on his mind. Joyce, who's waiting just outside the SAV-MART entrance, hears a distant crash, wondering what it is.

Chloe takes the same left without hesitation or much of a decrease in speed, making Steph tense up. The Dashboard King shakes his head.

"You ever hear from Mikey?" Chloe asks.

"Huh? Oh, Mikey North? I do, actually. You don't?"

"Nah. I'm not much into social media."

"Well, we do mostly keep in touch on Facebook. They're in Eugene. Drew goes to Oregon State. Their dad found a job on campus, too. Mike sends me his drawings sometimes, asking for feedback. As if I'm some kind of authority on art."

"Hey, I remember your designs. They were pretty good."

"Thanks, but my designs always felt more like engineering than art to me. I'm interested in making things work, you know? Not so much in making them be."

"Just because a thing works, doesn't mean it's not art. You went to an elite art school, remember?"

"I guess… but even so, you won't ask a photographer for feedback on a sculpture, or something."

"Oh, yes, I will."

"Well, what is she going to know?"

"Steph, nobody knows anything! You don't have to be an 'expert' on something to have an opinion. And you sure as hell don't have to be an expert for your opinion to matter to your friend."

Steph makes and impressed face, and Chloe rolls the window down.

"Where did you get so wise, Chloe Price?"

Chloe spins an imaginary Colt around her index finger.

"Seven-eleven."

As they pull up to the wire fence, the air is thick with distinct crack-rumble of the skateboards on concrete, punctuated with an occasional thunderboom of a board hitting a ramp. Half a dozen kids are lazily attacking the obstacles. All of the curbs, ramps, rails and quarter-pipes seem more worn, chipped, and cracked than Chloe remembers. Was there always that much grass growing through the asphalt?

Justin drifts over, while Trevor shouts her name through the loudspeaker of his cupped hands, and the rest of the posse gesture variously in greeting. Chloe salutes back.

"It's just like the prophecy said," Justin says, as he approaches. "She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes. And when she comes the world shall end."

Justin's wearing a red baseball cap on top of his glasses and flimsy goatee. Still, it's a goatee. His speech is the usual mellow drawl, but his glance at Steph is wary.

"It hasn't been that long, Justin. You remember Steph."

"Yeah, went to Blackwell, right? Sweet bootlegs."

"Uhm…"

"It's been too long, Price. You and Rachel got too big-time for us street rats."

"You're not a street rat, Williams. Your mom drives a fucking Mercedes."

"So did Gandhi."

"What? No, he didn't. And even if he did, what does that have to do with anything?"

"All I know is he wouldn't blame a man for the sins of his fathers. Or mothers…"

"Oh… I see what's going on. You are high on some hella crazy shit. Got any left?"

"Chloe, maybe you should show him the pic first," Steph says, fairly wedging herself between them.

"Oh yeah, word."

While Chloe fishes in her pocket for her phone, Justin squints sideways at Steph again.

"Here," Chloe says. "See if you recognize this."

"Before I look at anything," Justin says distinctly, "I would like it known that if I'm committing a crime by viewing whatever I'm about to be shown, I'm doing so without my knowledge or consent."

"I'm not wearing a wire, you paranoid ass. Look at the picture."

He does, reluctantly.

"Oh, hey. That's Rachel."

"Yeah, great work. But do you know whose bike that is? Who took the photo?"

"Why the hell would I know that?"

"Because this pic was taken right… over here," Chloe says, aligning the photo with the background from a spot about four yards away.

"What? Let me see that."

Justin grabs the phone and spends a solid minute switching between looking at the phone and looking at the view behind it. It appears as though he's forgotten what he was doing about halfway through it. Finally, Chloe takes the phone back.

"Seems legit," Justin confirms. "But I wasn't there when it happened. Don't know the bike. We did see Rachel every now and then, but not on any bikes."

"You saw her alone?"

"Yeah, she'd come and hang a couple of times. Couple other times she'd just walk by without stopping."

"Where the hell would she go?"

"Oh, you'd know better than me, I guess. Somewhere. Maybe nowhere. Blackwell is just a short hike from here. Anyway, let me see that phone a second."

He takes the phone and goes back to the fence, showing the pic to the rest of the skateboarders. Soon, he returns, with Trevor in tow.

"Chlo-ee Price," Trevor says. "What's the latest?"

"Steph's in town. Rachel missing. You know that bike?"

"No, but. You know 'Thirsty Horse'?"

"The bar? It's right here."

"Yeah, and it's like the only place that I know in Arcadia Bay…"

"…That ever has bikers."

The wind does a basic 180 like a poser, and begins to blow out of the West. It unmutes about a million sea gulls hovering near the cliffs. Suddenly, it's hard to hear.

"I met him in some shithole bar that didn't card me," Chloe Price says over the racket. "He was too rich for the place and too wasted. And he kept flashing bills…"

"Just tell me what happened, Chloe," says Max. "Now."

"I was an idiot. I thought he was so blazed it would be an easy score."

"You needed money that bad?"

"Actually, yes. I owe big time. And I thought I'd have enough for me and Rachel, if she ever showed up…"

The flashback winks out, but the memories linger: the gross tiny puddles on the bar counter, the "short hike" back to Blackwell, the flickering projector in Prescott's dorm room, Prescott himself crawling towards her with a grin on his spaced-out, possessed face. She shudders.

"Hey, you OK?" Steph.

"Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Let's go visit that shithole bar."

Chloe wants to drive again, but Steph is getting upset about the lack of social conscience, so they walk the block. Thirsty Horse is a squat, flat-roofed, cinderblock building, unadorned, except for a single green LAGER LIGHT BEER sign in a porthole-like window. Even the name is not on the building itself, but on the unattached billboard, yellow, with black Gothic letters and the black horse that suspiciously resembles the Ferrari logo. The whole thing looks like a prop, a scam, something that can be stripped, folded and stored in the back pocket of generic brand jeans in a manner of minutes, in the event the public ever gets wise.

None of it rings any bells, either.

Until they're inside, that is.

Then it's the St. Peter's fucking Basilica at Christmas.

The long counter, the dart boards, the high metal stools, the single billiard table worn through to wood in several spots. The air smelling of complete disregard for the indoor cigarette ban.

She knows all of it, except she's pretty sure she's never set foot in the place before.

Good luck explaining that one.

The bar is surprisingly empty, it being a solid 1PM in Arcadia Bay by now, but the hidden alarm they set off by entering eventually produces a bartender. She's a tall, wiry woman in a sleeveless black Calico Jack Flag t-shirt, with tattooed arms and lined face.

"You're too young to be day-drinking," she says.

"Not in this town," Chloe replies.

"We're looking for a friend," Steph says. "Hi."

"Your friend isn't here. Nobody here but me and Moe, and Moe doesn't have any friends."

"Does Moe have a motorcycle?" Chloe asks.

"No."

"Our friend is missing," Steph says, "and we're trying to find a person she might have met, recently. The owner of this bike. Chloe…"

Chloe pulls the phone out, finds the photo and flips it to the bartender.

"Whoa," the bartender says after roughly half a second. "Isn't that Rachel Amber?"

"You know Rachel?" Chloe and Steph say at the same time.

"From the papers, and the posters, and the radio. She's been the news for the last three weeks."

"Coulda fooled me," Chloe says.

"You talk to townies a lot?"

"Yeah, fair enough."

"Well, I do, cuz it's my job."

"What do they say?"

"The consensus is that she ran away. That she isn't someone to whom bad things happen."

"What do you think?" Chloe asks.

The bartender shrugs.

"I think bad shit can happen to anybody."

There's a bit of a heavy silence after that. A bit of a dead end.

"Is it OK if I smoke here?" Chloe asks.

"But do you recognize the motorcycle at all?" Steph asks. "We hear this is the only bar around that ever has bikers."

"Girl, I tend the bar. They don't bring their bikes inside."

"Lets go, Steph."

"Hey, if you want somebody who knows about bikes, go see Sam Taylor."

"Who's that?"

"Guy who's crazy about his bikes. And maybe a bit crazy otherwise. Works at Blackwell."

"Blackwell, really? Wait… Samuel? The janitor?"

"Yep. Big on bikes. Has at least two himself. Goes to rallies and whatnot."

"Samuel?"

"Nobody's just one thing."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But Samuel?"

He has a goatee, also, Chloe thinks. Jesus. Jesus had a beard, too, supposedly. Another suspect?

"Rachel came in here once, you know," the bartender segues in, clearly enjoying the impression she's leaving on Chloe.

"No shit?" the latter intones. "When?"

"Must have been two months ago now. March, maybe."

"Who with?"

"That Prescott kid."

"Fucking hell."

"Yeah, that whole family is bad news."

"Nah, it's a little closer to home than that," Chloe says, struggling with a flashback. "Let's go, Steph."

She takes a step and freezes.

"Unless you're just gonna tell me where Rachel is next."

"That's all I know, kid. Wish I could be of more help."

"Let's go, Steph."

She bursts through the door, gasping, gasping for air. The flashback is of Max and Chloe in the truck, parked at Blackwell, before the party. Her rage is a hot, pulsating thing. A drum that beats in her temples. Her body is like a coil.

Breathe. Just breathe.

Nathan.

Fucking Nathan.

Two months, she said. So probably doesn't mean anything. Except… everything that it could mean.

"Chloe, slow down," Steph says behind her. "This is progress. We're getting good info."

"Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. It's just the Nathan thing. In my dream… Remember, I told you about Nathan?"

"Yeah… that he was an apprentice to this teacher…"

Chloe stops and turns around so suddenly, that Steph almost headbutts her in the nose.

"He kills us both, Steph. First Rachel, then me."

"In the dream," Steph says. "Not in real life. OK?"

The skateboarders are taking a break on the grass, minus Justin and Trevor, who have probably gone out for munchies. So much for hooking Chloe up with some smokage. The wind picks up. A newspaper page drifts, flips and cartwheels across the parking lot and under the truck, but not before giving Chloe a sudden full frontal, like a flasher, against the wheel. It's the Beacon from two weeks ago. Chloe knows, because there's a picture of Rachel on the front page. "Rachel Amber Officially Confirmed Missing."

She sighs.

"Yes, I fucking know…"

As they get back in the truck and take off, Chloe's phone rings. She looks at the screen, confused, for a moment, before picking up.

"Frank?"

"Price, where are you?"

"Paris, where else?"

"No, that's where you would be, if you were smart. But since you're not, you should at least be lying low. People are looking for you."


	18. Again

"Jesus Christ! I must be out of my fucking mind!"

Frank Bowers screams at the sky, makes claw-hands, and punts the plastic table into the sand, scattering beer bottles and mostly empty takeout containers.

"Why the hell did I think that warning you would actually make you get out of town or something? It's like I forgot who I was talking to. Like I thought I was talking to a normal person. But to Chloe Price, 'lie low, people are looking for you' means 'come see me immediately and bring a fucking friend, too!' Because of course it does!"

"OK, Frank," Chloe says. "I appreciate the warning, but…"

"I should just shoot you both right now and dump your bodies into the bay," Frank cuts her off. "Then maybe I'll survive the week."

"I see you are distraught."

Actually, she hasn't seen him this upset since the Damon thing. Or rather, since the flashbacks in which he died by her hand. It's worrisome. Steph looks downright terrified.

"You don't see shit! Forget it. What the fuck do you want?"

"Uh. Don't get upset, but I was wondering if… I could have my gun back, with everything that's going on?"

Surprisingly, that tickles him. Weird dude.

"You know what?" he chuckles. "It's ridiculously insolent, but... it's probably the smartest thing you said in a month."

He goes into the RV and comes back with a paper bag covered in grease spots. This he gives to Chloe.

"You owe me big time after this. And I will collect, believe me. Don't ever point that thing at me again, got it?"

Overjoyed at this unexpected outcome, which she considered a pretty long shot, and eager to continue proving her intelligence, Chloe asks, "Was it the surveillance?"

He rolls his eyes at her. Her score's been reset, clearly.

"No, there's no goddamn surveillance there. If there was, they would already have found your ass. And mine…"

"So how…"

"You shot the padlock off, stupid!"

"Oh. I thought you said…"

"No point replacing the lock, if there's a huge bullet dent in the hatch. And you left something else there, too."

"What?"

"They didn't say. Hopefully it wasn't your wallet or something."

"No. Still got that."

"Well, I don't know. What are you missing?"

She checks her pockets. Keys, smokes, wallet, knife, loose change…

"Cute robot panda keychain," says Max, after rewinding time at least a dozen times. "A pack with 7 cigarettes in it, a parking ticket stamped at 10:34AM, and 86 cents!"

Chloe Price empties her pockets onto the diner table, her eyes getting bigger with every item.

"Amazeballs! I literally got chills all over my neck. You have powers."

"Oh, shit," she says.

"What?"

"I think it's my marker. It musta dropped when I crawled under that wall…"

"Your marker? Well, that's not so bad. Unless you carved your initials into it or something. 'Property of Arcadia Bay Idiot.'

"Uh, no."

"Refreshing that you got nothing stupid to say. Now get out of here. I'm tired of you."

"Can you tell me more about these… farmers?"

"Oh yeah! Give you their names, maybe? Their photos? No. I told you enough to be careful, which I see was a mistake already. If I tell you any more, you'll just ride up to them, grin and say, 'Frank says you're looking for me. What's up?' I just know it."

"I mean, these guys wouldn't have anything to do with Rachel, right?"

"Not unless she went snooping around underground bunkers."

"Don't you fucking joke like that."

"Get out of here, Price, before I sic Pompidou on you."

"Well, if that's how it's going to be, Frank, you were talking about spotting me some weed the other day…"

He slams the door in her face so hard, the whole RV shakes.

"That went well," Steph says. "Can we go now?"

She's pale. Not unlike Max after she pulled the trigger on Frank in the junkyard. Or was it after she didn't pull the trigger?

"Sorry, Steph," Chloe says, as they walk through the empty parking lot back to the truck. "But Frank isn't as hardcore as he fronts. All he cares about is his cash, stash, and that mangy dog. Now these guys he was talking about… I don't know about them. I didn't really like how they made him nervous. He better be right about them and Rachel…

"The good news is, they don't have much to go on. That marker is a dime a dozen, and it's not like they can run ballistics on that bullet and match it with the step-douche's gun. Which, by the way, we got back!"

"Joy," Steph says.

Sand that the wind blew in from the beach fills the cracks in the asphalt and crunches under their shoes. A train clangs by, slow enough to jump on.

Chloe stops with her hand on the door handle, watching it.

"Still," she says, breaking out of her reverie, "if shit is getting too crazy, I will never blame you for wanting to get out. Just say the word, and I'll take you back to Portland."

"No… No way. I'm not leaving you here by yourself. It's just… It's a bit overwhelming. I feel like we're back in the days of the fire, and the Tempest, and the hospital, and you and Rachel… Except, instead of hearing about it all while I DM a game or something, or watching that smoke cloud from a distance, now I'm actually in the middle of it. I'm like some newbie bard character actually running around with Callamastia, as she cuts through hordes of the undead. Like I'm there with you when that psycho stabs Rachel, and she still gets stabbed, and I just stand there, not knowing what to do. Like, if Frank attacked you there, what would I do? I feel useless."

"Steph, you're the one who's keeping me sane and on task. Without you, between wanting to cry at every little thing and these drugs wreaking havoc on my brain, I would have already lost it. I'm really glad you're here. But I would really hate for you to get hurt. I couldn't live with that."

"OK, then, let's be careful, find Rachel, and, as much as it is possible, stay away from scary losers like Frank."

"Sounds like a great plan."

The train drags its rusted, spray-painted cars north, towards Seattle. As the last of them clears the crossing, it reveals a red pickup truck waiting to cross the other way. Chloe clenches the steering wheel. She knows that truck. She knows the driver. Nathan Prescott stares out at the ocean as he rocks from side to side crossing the tracks. He looks like an asshole, who's had a pretty bad day, but finally sees something that isn't entirely getting on his nerves. This look lasts only until he becomes aware of her unmoving truck and its driver and passenger and their unmoving stares. His face aligns itself into a What the fuck? sneer, but Chloe finally lets go of the brakes and lets the truck roll across and away from him.

"Fuck," she says, possibly at the same time he does.

She drives slowly, much slower than she normally drives.

"There's no way I can ask him about Rachel, is there?" she asks out loud. There's no way that conversation is happening. What if there's a gun involved? He might also have a gun. Almost certainly has one, actually. Would it turn into a stand off? Should it? Should she pull the gun on him and get it over with?

"There might be," Steph says, "but probably not right now."

"He's right there, though," Chloe says in a low voice. "Alone."

"If he's involved somehow, he's not going to talk, and knowing who he is, whatever he does say will sound like he's involved, regardless if he is or not. You know what I mean?"

"Shit. Yes, I do. OK, let's get something we can work with, first. Samuel and his bikes."

Except it's Saturday, and Samuel won't be at Blackwell. Chloe knows this, but drives there anyway, because what if he is, and because she doesn't exactly have many other options. They park in the lot and walk across campus to the dorms. For a Saturday, the grounds are decidedly undeserted. Every piece of outdoor furniture seems to be occupied by a sketching artiste; a spirit-store-clad jock is tossing a piece of sport paraphernalia on every patch of open lawn.

Steph's getting all nostalgic, talking about how nothing's changed, and Chloe can tell it's taking all she has not to go over to the picnic table where a bunch of geeks seem to be rolling 20-sided dice.

"It's only been a year, Steph."

"Wow, you're right. Feels longer somehow."

So there's hope, and there are flashbacks, but both dissipate at about the same time. The door to Samuel's hideout is locked. Futile knocks go unanswered, and the squirrel rummaging through the overturned garbage can nearby won't say where he lives, due to the Spirit Animal Confidentiality Agreement. As they stand there, pondering what crime to commit to obtain the janitor's home address, there's a noticeable change in their surroundings. Like the sun's been blotted out by a sudden cloud, or the wings of a giant black bird.

"Chloe!"

And there is the mustached reason for it.

"You are in big trouble!"

"He calls me 'Girlie,'" Chloe says, exasperated.

"He can be old-fashioned," Joyce replies.

"An old-fashioned dickhole."

David Madsen, apparently the only male resident of Arcadia Bay over the age of 12 who doesn't wear a goatee, is therefore the only one who is free of suspicion in the case of frolicking with Rachel on the beach, as though he already didn't have a perfect alibi of being the Creepy Mustache from Planet Dipshit. Famously, the mustachio man trusts no one with a goatee, which makes him suspect every man he sees in town, and of course, any woman who's spotted outside of a kitchen is getting straight on his nerves. He's wearing his Blackwell Security-and-frown uniform, which is in need of ironing. Preferably while still on his person. His appearance on the scene triggers multiple flashbacks and a single strong emotion in Chloe. The flashback that follows the memory of the kitchen conversation is the one in which Max hides in her closet, while David slaps her across the face.

Like that would ever happen without him getting stabbed.

She decides to be civil this once, though, for Steph's sake.

"Don't talk to me like I'm in fucking grade school, David."

"Then don't act like you're… in grade school! Running away like that! Do you know what you're doing to your mother?"

"Yes, I do. I already talked to my mom, and I don't need to hear it again from you."

"What you need, is…"

"Discipline?"

"… to grow up."

"Oh, like someone who can leave the house and be alone for two days without everyone losing their shit? I'm nineteen!"

"If you're such an adult, why don't you get a job? Move out? Live on your own?"

"So you want to evict me out of my own house now? Is that it?"

"I want you to be responsible. Get your life together."

"Maybe I wouldn't be so fucked up, if my mother didn't marry an asshole like you!"

"You can't talk to me like that!"

"What are you gonna do? Hit me?"

"How about I arrest you for trespassing? A few days in the cell oughta straighten you out."

"You're not a real cop, douchebag. Let's go, Steph."

He steps in front of her.

"Oh, while you're on campus property, I'm as real as they get. So you're not going anywhere, until I'm done talking to you."

"Let's go, Steph."

"You stay where you are!" David yells, pointing at Steph, who freezes. "Now tell me why you are here, Chloe, before I call the 'real' cops. Are you a drug mule? I'm not blind, you know."

"Fuck," Chloe sighs. "We don't have time for this."

"We're looking for Samuel, the janitor," Steph says.

"Why?" David narrows his eyes. "What business can you possibly have with him?"

"None of your business, that's for sure," Chloe inserts.

"He might help us find Rachel."

"Rachel…?" For a few seconds, David stammers, not knowing what to say. Then, the familiar asshole takes over. "Why, that snobby little tart's disappearance might be the best thing that's ever happened to…"

"You motherfucker!"

Chloe shouts and rushes forward, with Steph having to once again step between them.

"Why would you say that?" she asks, making David stammer in confusion once again.

"Because he's a scumbag," Chloe growls, pushing weakly against Steph's back. Her momentary rage subsides into tears, which are now streaming down her cheeks.

"Chloe never... she never saw…" David says quietly, trailing off. "Anyway, you shouldn't be searching for her. It's not a task for a couple of…"

"Do you know where Samuel lives?" Steph cuts him off, timely. "Can you tell us, please?"

"What does that weirdo have to do with anything, anyway?"

"We're looking for a biker, and he knows about bikes."

David scoffs.

"Well, I don't know where he lives. But the office does, I'm sure. Go on. Get off my campus. I'll text you the address."

With that, he turns and stomps away.

"Asshole," Chloe breathes.

"He's going to help us, Chloe."

"Makes me hate him even more."

They go back to the truck and wait in silence. Chloe tears have stopped. She punches the dashboard a few time, then lights a cigarette. Steph is checking her phone. A few minutes later, Chloe's phone buzzes. She checks the screen and starts the engine, without replying.

Samuel Taylor lives in a repurposed barn on an acre of land bordering the junkyard. You can literally see the stacks of wrecked cars from his driveway, and in the opposite direction, between the trees, the lighthouse. The house is red, with white doors. There's an old silo nearby and the remains of the stables. All of it seems familiar to Chloe, which does not surprise her. Having basicallly lived at the junkyard for the last three years, she probably saw the house without seeing it a million times. She wonders if there's a storm bunker on the property.

An old woman opens the door, because of course Samuel lives with his mother. She invites them into the hallway and shuffles away. A minute later, Samuel appears. Seeing his face, and the gray short-sleeved button shirt he wears, Chloe gets an unsettling feeling that the old woman was Samuel in disguise.

"Chloe Price and Steph Gingrich," Samuel says. "This is certainly a surprise. I didn't expect to see you here again."


	19. Shed

There is no helpful flashback, so she has to ask.

Contrary to what he had said during the greeting, Samuel does not seem especially surprised. Or coherent.

"Oh, now I wonder if you really forgot, or it wasn't you at all," he says.

"It's probably the former. My mind has not been working right, lately…"

Which is true enough. At the same time, Chloe can't help but wonder if Samuel's mind has been perfectly up to speed. Lately or ever. Especially after he smiles and nods at her comment, knowingly. Also at the same time, though, she feels something heavy and toxic spreading through her limbs. As if her brain is an octopus who just released a cloud of blank ink into her bloodstream.

"It's OK not to be OK, Chloe Price," Samuel says 3 years earlier, as she stands in his doorway at Blackwell, hatching a plot to sabotage the sprinkler system.

Is it, though?

"Just tell me Samuel, please."

"A few weeks ago you came here asking if I had seen Rachel Amber, recently and with a man. I told you that I had not, and you went away."

"What? That's it?"

"That was the extent of the conversation, yes… But later that night I heard someone walking around my property. I turned the barn light on, and they ran away. I thought maybe you didn't believe me and wanted to make sure I didn't keep Rachel in one of the buildings here. People are sometimes suspicious…"

"Are you sure it was me?"

"The brief glimpse I caught of them reminded me of you, Chloe Price, and the bootprints I found in the morning seemed like they were left by the cowboy boots you wore when you visited me, but like I said before, it could have been someone else. I shouldn't have assumed. I apologize."

"Was it raining?" Chloe asks.

"Indeed. I remember being… disappointed that… someone would suspect me enough to come searching in the middle of such a downpour. I mean, I realize that I may come across as strange at times, but… Are you all right?"

Chloe doesn't hear the question, even though she's not actually having a flashback, only remembering it.

The rain and the dark woods and the fear and the knife in her hand. And then another image flashes through her brain: a flashback, a hallucination, or just a very vivid scene she just imagined.

She can't fucking tell anymore.

The image is of a big ass wooden plank standing horizontally on its edge, leaning against a rusted carcass of steel shelving. First standing and then falling flat, like a hatch closing.

"No," she says.

No fucking way.

Chloe Price stabs Frank. Except suddenly it's not Frank. It's someone else. She can't tell who, but she stabs.

She's about to fall. Does, actually, but Steph and Samuel catch her and sit her on the sofa.

"What is it, Chloe?" Steph asks.

Fear.

That's what it is, Steph.

A voice in the back of your head. Voices. The black humming. Whispering that sometimes it's better not to know. That sometimes its better to give up the search. That sometimes a lie is better than the truth.

Except no. Chloe's not buying it.

Can't afford it.

She's too broke.

She's not stopping, no matter how scary the truth is.

Fear is the enemy, so fuck fear.

She shakes her head.

"Just a bad… vision."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not… right now."

Samuel again looks unnervingly like he knows.

"A man once said reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it," he says. "But I wonder if it's really that simple."

There's a long silent pause, with which only Samuel looks perfectly at ease.

"We actually came here, because we heard you're something of an expert on motorcycles."

Steph to the rescue.

For the first time, Samuel does look surprised.

"Really?" he asks. "It's not because you wanted to make sure again that I'm not keeping Rachel Amber in my shed?"

"Sorry to pry," Max Caufield says, "but why are there photos of Rachel Amber in your shed? I'm curious about her…"

It's a Janitor's Closet, Chloe thinks absently. Why would she call it a "shed"?

"Can we make sure of that at the same time?" She asks, out loud.

"We were actually wondering if you can help us identify a bike," Steph cuts in. "Chloe?"

Samuel studies the photo on Chloe's phone for a long time. Long enough for Chloe to calm down a bit and look around the room. There are bookshelves packed with tomes, a TV that reminds her of waking up in that motel room, and a wall-mounted lamp that looks like a deer hunting trophy. There's a fireplace and enough wooden squirrels on the mantelpiece for an all-squirrel chess set. The fat one is the rook. The stupid-looking one is the king. They look a lot like the pair of squirrels that used to guard the mantelpiece at Casa De La Price (what the hell happened to them, anyway?). Did those come from Samuel, too? Her dad never mentioned him, but did they know each other? Is it possible that they had been friends at one time who drifted apart?

In the corner next to the fireplace, there's a log leaning on the wall vertically. Future Squi-nocchio. Is Samuel trying to create a "real boy"?

"That is an Indian Classic Chief," Samuel finally says. "Probably 2000 to 2003. What do you want to know about it?"

"We're more interested in its owner," says Steph.

"The only Indian Classic Chief I know of in or around Arcadia Bay belongs to this guy named Tommy."

They talk over each other.

"Do you know his last name?"

"Where can we find him?"

"Does he live in town?"

"I don't know his last name or much about him," Samuel replies, "except that he's a Tillamook."

"He's a Native American?" Chloe asks.

"Yeah. The bike is like an inside joke I don't quite understand."

"So he might be staying with the tribe. On the reservation?"

"Might be, but your guess where that is is as good as mine. I know they've been forced to move a few times recently. Because of the fire a few years back, then because of Pan Estates. Who knows where they ended up. Would you like to see the shed now?"

It's pretty awkward as they follow him out of the house and wait for him to remove the padlock. Inside, there are two motorcycles: a Harley and a Yamaha. Both are in pristine condition. There's nothing else of note in the shed, not even hay on the floor, but Chloe's eyes scan it for hatches, anyway.

"Do you think Tommy had anything to do with Rachel Amber's disappearance?" Samuel asks, locking the shed again.

"That picture is the only lead we have at this point."

"That's not much of a lead. Rachel gave out headshots like squirrels chasing food."

"What does that even mean?" Chloe asks under her breath.

"But if you want to know where the tribe is, you should probably ask Claire."

"Claire? Who the hell is Claire?"

"She's the only other Tillamook I know."

"OK. Where can we find her?"

"I believe lately she spends most of her time in the alley behind the Two Whales diner."


End file.
